(Newswire.net— April 14, 2020) — Julian Assange became a father of two during his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his partner revealed.
Stella Morris said she has been in a relationship with the founder of the Wikileaks website since 2015 and is raising their two sons on her own, BBC reports.
She says she decided to talk about it because of fears about the spread of the coronavirus at the Belmarsh Prison in the UK, where Assange has been jailed ever since being evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy a year ago.
The Australian, who is 48, is now seeking bail on health concerns.
Ms. Morris, a lawyer of South African descent, revealed their relationship in an interview with The Daily Mail on Sunday claiming “his life is on the verge”.
She fears Assange would not “survive a coronavirus infection”. She also implied that Assange could be infected with the deadly virus on purpose.
In a video posted on the WikiLeaks YouTube channel, she says she met Assange in 2011 when she joined his team of lawyers.
He received asylum at the Ecuador embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that was later dismissed.
Assange and his legal team fear Britain will extradite him to the United States, which are accusing him of espionage.
Ms. Morris says she visited Assange at the embassy almost every day and that she “got to know Julian well.” The couple has been in a relationship since 2015, and two years later they had gotten engaged.
She said Assange watched the birth of both sons through a video link and they visited him at the embassy.
Three-year-old Gabriel and one-year-old Max were talking to their father via video call, Ms. Morris said.
“Forming a family was a deliberate decision to break down those walls around him and imagine a life beyond that prison,” she says in the Wikileaks YouTube video.
Assange was arrested on April 11, 2019, at the Ecuadorian Embassy. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for violating bail conditions.
He was due to be released from prison last September after serving his prison sentence, but the judge ruled that he should remain in jail pending an extradition hearing because of the possibility of escape.
The Mail received insight into the details of the children with Stella Morris from court documents in a U.S. espionage case. Assange is thought to have more children, though little is known about them. He is known to have an adult son, Daniel Assange, who is reportedly a software designer in Australia.
More than a thousand prisoners in the UK have symptoms of the COVID-19, official figures show.
An inmate from the same prison Assange is in, died from complications from the COVID-19 virus the Ministry of Justice said.