MY FIGHT TO FREE MY HUSBAND

She's not only a member of Julian Assange's legal team, but also his wife and the mother to two of his children. In this interview, Stella Assange shares details of how their secret love affair unfolded, their prison wedding and how she's thrown her heart and soul into campaigning for his release

- ANDREW BILLEN

SHE’S well aware that the story she shares with her husband sounds more like fiction than fact, a wild tale of data cloudbursts and international intrigue. Some mornings, though, life must in practice resemble a remorseless grind for both Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and his wife, Stella: he in his bleak high-security prison in London, she in almost her fifth year of trying to get him out of it. 

Consider this morning. Her trip from her home in west London to HMP Belmarsh has taken an hour and a quarter by train and bus. On arrival, her fingerprints were taken and her bags locked away. She was issued with a visitor’s pass and her prints were checked again before she passed through an x-ray machine. At this point, she was told to go back to the beginning because she was wearing a hoodie. 

She made it through again, was magnetically scanned for weapons and patted down for drugs. They also checked inside her mouth, behind her ears and in her hair. Then it was across a yard to the prison proper where her credentials were checked again and a dog sniffed her. 

The Assanges meet in a huge hall, observed by guards from a floor above. She is allocated one of the 40 tables – each contains a recording device – and there at last she and Julian embrace and for an hour or so talk, holding hands across the desk. 

She does all this on average twice a week. Often, she takes their two boys, Gabriel (5) and Max (4), who sit on their father’s lap or run off to the play area. Today, it was just the two of them. 

Does her heart leap when she spots him? 

“I mean, it’s like getting re-energised and finding some sanity. Even if it’s just an hour, it makes a big difference,” Stella says.