Assange fighting for survival
“Julian is fighting for his survival and he’s going through hell" Stella Assange
By Matt Kennard
November 13, 2022: Information Clearing House -- "Declassified UK " - “Julian is fighting for his survival and he’s going through hell, that’s the best way to put it,” Stella Assange says when I ask how he’s doing.
The wife of the world’s most famous political prisoner is speaking to Declassified as part of her relentless battle to save her husband’s life.
“Sometimes it’s been really, really very difficult for him, and sometimes when he’s able to see the children, when he’s with the children, when there’s progress in the case, then he’s energised,” she adds. “And he’s energised by all the support that he sees out there for him. He gets letters of support and expressions of support constantly.”
One thing immediately noticeable when talking with Stella is she has the same unusual intensity and focus as her husband. For anyone who has met Julian, the similarities are striking.
He has now been in Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London for three and a half years. He was initially put in there ostensibly because of a bail violation after he was given political asylum by the Ecuadorian government.
In 2012, UK courts had ordered Assange’s extradition to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations. The case was dropped in August 2019, soon after Assange was put in Belmarsh. He is now being held as a remand prisoner at the behest of the US government.
“Belmarsh has about 800 prisoners, and it’s a very harsh regime because it has very serious offenders,” Stella says. “It also has people on remand for non-serious offences. And it has people who are like Julian, where there’s some kind of political aspect to it. Everyone is treated as if they were a serious offender. This is what distinguishes Belmarsh from other prisons.”
“When Julian calls, for example, we only get ten minutes at a time,” she adds. “The explanation for this is that they’re surveilling the phone calls and there’s a technical limitation to how they can surveil the phone calls. So that’s incredibly frustrating: to have just ten minute chunks of phone calls.”
She continues: “Julian’s in his cell for over 20 hours a day, but it varies from day to day. During lockdown, it was for a critical week where there was an outbreak of Covid in his wing, it was 24/7 for several days in a row.”
Last month, Assange tested positive for covid and was in solitary confinement in his cell for 10 days. He has a chronic lung condition.
“It’s not like you imagine prison like you see on TV,” Stella says. “The prisoners don’t sit together when they eat. They have to queue up to collect their food and then they have to eat in their own cell. Isolation is the norm. Sometimes they’re allowed out to collect medication, to collect food, to go to the yard, which should be once a day for an hour, but in practice it’s less. Social visits and legal visits, the visits occur a few times a week, if that. Sometimes visits get cancelled, like with the death of the Queen.”
Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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