WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange to Get Married in Prison

British prison authorities gave WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to marry while in custody.

WikiLeaks said in a statement late on Thursday that the couple had launched legal action after they "were essentially being blocked from being able to marry".

"Good news: UK government has backed down 24h before the deadline," his fiancee Stella Moris in a post on Twitter attached with a photo of the pair standing beneath a rainbow.

"Julian and I now have permission to marry in Belmarsh prison. I am relieved but still angry that legal action was necessary to put a stop to the illegal interference with our basic right to marry."

https://twitter.com/StellaMoris1/status/1458911877522767874

A Prison Service spokesperson said: "Mr Assange's application was received, considered and processed in the usual way by the prison governor, as for any other prisoner."

Assange, wanted by Washington to face various charges related to the mass leak of classified documents, plans to marry Stella Moris, a former member of his legal team with whom he has two children.

The WikiLeaks founder, 50, was arrested in Britain in 2019 for jumping bail, after spending seven years inside Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden where he faced allegations of sexual assault. These charges were later dropped.

The US government has indicted him on 18 charges relating to WikiLeaks' 2010 release of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.