Julian Assange: Wife reveals what freed Wikileaks founder is looking forward to doing after landing in Australia
Julian Assange’s wife has revealed he wanted to swim in the ocean every day and teach their children to catch crabs when he landed in Australia a free man.
The WikiLeaks founder struck a plea deal with the United States, in which he was convicted of espionage in exchange for his safe passage to his home country.
After the attack, 52-year-old Assange was pursued by American authorities for fourteen years disclosure of thousands of secret military documents in 2010.
He spent more than five years in a British maximum security prison after spending seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
During his captivity he met his lawyer wife Stella, 40, with whom he secretly fathered two children.
Mrs Assange appeared on The Project on Wednesday evening, shortly before her husband landed in Canberra.
She was questioned about her husband’s newfound freedom and what his first words to her were.
“That he missed me and couldn’t wait to see me later tonight and all the things we’re going to do in the coming days, weeks,” Ms Assange told the programme.
Julian Assange and his wife Stella embrace after he landed in Canberra around 7.30pm on Wednesday (pictured)
“He wants to swim in the ocean every day and he wants to teach our children how to catch crabs… I think he wants to go to the beach,” Assange told the program.
Ms Assange said she “cried tears of joy” when her husband was released without probation or supervision by a US federal court on the Pacific island of Saipan.
‘It was a moment of letting go. “I couldn’t quite believe it and I was also sad that I wasn’t there,” she added.
The South African-born lawyer said she had prepared her two young children for their father’s release.
“I’ve been talking about the many things we’re going to do when he comes home,” she said.
‘That we are going to Australia together and if we go to Australia, it will be when Dad is there. And the many, many places he wants to show them and the things we’re going to do.”
Stella Assange (pictured) said she ‘cried tears of joy’ as her husband was released without probation or supervision by a US federal court on the Pacific island of Saipan
Assange, 52, is a free man after landing in Canberra on Wednesday evening
Julian Assange was on the phone with his wife an hour before landing in Australia
Ms Assange said it would take time to get to know each other in the free world after years of restrictions and captivity.
“These kinds of limitations really get internalized,” she explained.
“I think it will be quite a process and I’ve spoken to people who have been incarcerated and their relatives and so on, they all say the same thing.
‘You need space. You need time. You have to process things. Yesterday someone said that freedom comes slowly.’
Mr Assange met his lawyer wife Stella, 40, during his captivity and secretly fathered two children with her
Assange has been held in one of Britain’s most secure prisons since April 2019. He is pictured here in May 2019
Ms. Assange acknowledged that it may be “premature” to talk about pardoning her husband, but she stressed that his conviction for espionage sets a dangerous precedent.
“(It) has criminalized standard journalistic activities and it has set a precedent that can be used against other members of the press in the future,” she added.
The couple hugged as Assange’s private jet landed in Canberra at around 7.30pm on Wednesday.
His criminal conviction for espionage means he is now banned from entering the US.
After falling out with the South American nation’s rulers, he was dragged out of hiding and locked up in Belmarsh in 2019 while the US tried to extradite him.
Assange has been a wanted man since 2010, when WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents about Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – along with troves of diplomatic cables.
In 2012, when authorities surrounded him over “credible and reliable” allegations of sexual crimes against a woman in Sweden, he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he remained for seven years in often farcical conditions.
Ecuador eventually grew tired of him being there, revoked his asylum and kicked him out – leading to his immediate arrest and imprisonment in Britain while he fought extradition to the US.
The US government considers only Assange’s five years spent in Belmarsh, but his lawyer argued that the entire fourteen years counted.