Stella Morris — now Stella Assange — was the loudest voice in the room when this site first wrote about Julian Assange’s Old Bailey extradition fight. She is the mother of the two sons he fathered inside Ecuador’s London embassy. She said if the United States got him, the boys would never know their father.
“It’s not Julian in the prison. It’s the kids that are being deprived of their father. It’s me that’s being deprived.”
Assange faced 18 U.S. counts, including Espionage Act charges, over Chelsea Manning’s 2010 war logs. Washington claimed the publications endangered agents. No evidence was ever produced that WikiLeaks got anyone killed. The documents showed civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan the public had a right to see. Publishing truthful information from a source is what journalists do.
Julian Assange with his son Gabriel.
Spanish counsel Aitor Martinez, Ecuadorian counsel Carlos Poveda, Julian Assange, Stella Morris, barrister Jennifer Robinson.
The threat was ADX Florence — 7-by-12 cells, 23 hours a day, the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” Morris called the case an attack on journalism. If a publisher can be extradited for inconvenient war reporting, any British journalist is next. The Espionage Act offers no First Amendment defense. Obama’s Justice Department debated it and backed off. Trump’s did not.
The extradition never happened.
On June 24, 2024 Assange left Belmarsh after roughly five years. On June 26, 2024 he pleaded guilty in Saipan to one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national-defense information. Judge Ramona Manglona sentenced him to time served — five years and two months — and he flew home to Australia to Stella and the boys. He is the first publisher convicted under the Espionage Act. Reporters Without Borders called the release overdue. Amnesty and the Committee to Protect Journalists warned the conviction is a weapon against any reporter who exposes the state. In October 2024 Assange told the Council of Europe he had “chosen freedom over unrealizable justice” and had “pleaded guilty to journalism.” Representatives James McGovern and Thomas Massie have urged a pardon.
Stella’s 2020 warning was right. Related from The AEGIS Alliance: WikiLeaks’ Spy Files Russia and the Panama Papers reporter blown up in her car.
