NRK seriously meets Stella Morris in London. She is fighting for the life of her future husband. But she believes there is also a lot at stake: the reputation of the British legal system and the entirety of Western democracy.
– It is wrong to think that this is a lawsuit. The lawyer says it is a political issue that is being washed through the judicial system.
It is desperately trying to overturn the decision of the British Court of Appeal to extradite Assange to the United States.
Watch the full interview with Morris and more about the Assange case on NRK’s Urix TV show on Wednesday.
prison wedding
In 2015, she became friends with the man who five years earlier had published classified US military documents from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He is now accused of espionage.
Stella Morris fights for her fiancé Julian Assange in London.
Photo: Henry Nichols/ReutersPhoto: Henry Nichols/Reuters
When they met, Assange was granted asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Not a free man, he was also accused of rape and sexual assault of two women in Sweden.
Two years later they got engaged. Two years later, all charges were dropped in Sweden. At the same time, the British police took him out of the embassy and put him in prison. He was convicted of violating bail rules in 2012 and the United States has requested his extradition.
Children visit prison
Now they have two sons, ages two and four together, and they hope to get married in March. They are betting on a wedding in the high-risk Belmarsh prison in London. “British Guantanamo,” as Morris calls it.
There she visits two or three times a week. Sometimes the kids are with us.
– He takes them in his arms and reads them books. this is wonderul.
– How do you explain to the children that the father is in prison?
Julian Assange’s girlfriend tells NRK about the difficult conversations when the two kids visit their father in the high-risk Belmarsh Prison.
Photo: George Parks/NRK
– I say their father is a hero, but the bad guys prevent him from going home.
– Who are the bad guys?
– And evils are the interests that carried out criminal acts exposed by Julian. Those who are using the law now to silence it.
Comparing With Solzhenitsyn
Stella Morris thinks Assange is the “modern Solzhenitsyn”. The Russians made the world aware of Stalin’s slave and concentration camps and he was condemned to stay there.
Documents published by Julian Assange via WikiLeaks revealed war crimes such as torture and the killing of civilians.
It has been indoors for nearly three years. She’s taller than a fellow prisoner convicted of serious violent crimes, his lawyer girlfriend points out.
– Julian suffers. The body and soul are under tremendous pressure. It’s torture and he’s dying now.
– political scandal
The sound is breaking. She has to recover. On the first day of the appeal in October, Assange received a small blow. Morris fears a new one. She believes that the case against Assange is a policy, not a law. He uses strong words about the British legal process:
– The fact that a British court gave the go-ahead for extradition is scandalous.
Demonstrators are fighting for the release of Assange. They believe that the British judicial system has failed in this case.
Photo: Frank Augstein/AP
There were two experienced judges on the British Court of Appeal based on US assurances that Assange’s health would be taken into account in a possible ruling. The judges therefore believe that there is no legal basis for refusing extradition.
Today, the court itself will decide whether the Supreme Court will consider an appeal against the extradition order.
If the answer is no, the case is submitted to the Minister of the Interior, who must approve or reject the extradition. She has two months to make that decision.
If the Minister of the Interior agrees to the extradition, this decision can also be appealed. It is also closely related to the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Western democracies are believed to have weakened
When Julian Assange published several documents in 2010, he must have known the risks he was taking. We ask his fiancée if he does not understand that this will have consequences.
– The documents were classified because the US authorities wanted to conceal what had happened. You answer that this is what investigative journalism should reveal.
Julian Assange saluting from a prison car window in 2019.
Photo: DANIEL LEAL / AFP
Morris believes that it is not only Julian Assange who has lost in this political game. She says the case against Assange shows how press freedom, human rights and Western democracies have also been weakened. Fear the forces that prevent the truth from emerging.
– Stella Morris says the prosecution is a sign of the weakness of both the US and the UK.
She never thinks that her boyfriend will come to the States.
– She concludes that either Julian is released – or he dies.
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