The founder of the WikiLeaks resource Julian Assange, who is in the British prison of Belmarsh, has received permission to marry his fiancée, Stella Maurice, according to the BBC.
The Prison Service said Assange’s application was “reviewed by the prison governor in the usual manner.”
Prisoners have the right to apply for marriage in prison under the 1983 Marriage Act. In cases where the applications are approved, they must cover all the costs of getting married without the help of taxpayers.
In an interview with The Mail, Stella Maurice revealed that she has been in a relationship with Julian Assange since 2015 and raised their two young sons on her own. In a video posted to her YouTube account Wikileaks, she stated that she met him in 2011 when she joined his legal team.
Julian Assange ended up in British prison due to the events of 2012. Then in Sweden, he was charged with sexual harassment, and the UK had to decide on his extradition. Assange, released on bail, did not appear in court and took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was for seven years. The Swedish authorities later closed the case. In April 2019, the founder of Wikileaks was found guilty of failure to appear in court in 2012 at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Then the Ecuadorian authorities allowed the British police to enter the embassy and arrest the founder of Wikileaks. In early May 2019, a UK court sent Assange to jail for 50 weeks.
In April 2019, the US Department of Justice announced that it accused the founder of WikiLeaks of conspiring with ex-Wikileaks informant Chelsea Manning to hack into the networks of government computers to distribute secret military documents. Later, the US judicial authorities announced a decision to bring additional charges against the founder of Wikileaks on 17 more counts. All accusations, as noted by the American media, are related to the illegal receipt and disclosure of data related to the US defense.