Stella Assange, human rights lawyer & wife fighting to free the WikiLeaks founder

An elated Stella Assange on Tuesday announced that her husband and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would be set free, after he agreed to plead guilty to espionage, in a deal with the US Justice Department.

Julian is accused of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information. He was released from the high-security Belmarsh prison in UK, after a long-drawn battle against extradition to the US.

Now, the WikiLeaks founder must appear before a US judge in Northern Mariana Islands, who is expected to sign off on the deal that involves time served.

The apparent victory follows tireless efforts by his wife Stella, a lawyer and human rights defender.

Born in 1983 to a Spanish mother and a Swedish father in South Africa's Johannesburg, Stella Devant grew up in Botswana, Lesotho, Sweden and Spain. She moved to the UK to study politics and law at SOAS and Oxford University. Stella worked in East Timor and Botswana before joining Julian's legal team in London in 2011.

At the time, Julian was taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, fighting allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, a charge that was later dropped. Stella's fluency in Spanish and Swedish proved valuable during the negotiations.

She changed her name to Stella Moris in 2012 out of concern for her family's safety.

Her personal relationship with Julian began in 2015. They have two children together, the first born in 2017 and the second in 2019.

They were married in March 2022 in the Belmarsh prison in London, where Julian was later incarcerated. By then, US authorities had charged him with espionage.

In October 2022, Stella organised a human chain around the UK Parliament, calling for Julian's freedom and an end to any extradition attempts. A multitude of appeals followed in British courts, that ended with a plea deal with the US.

Stella's fight for Julian’s release has snowballed into a global campaign for the freedom of press.