Assange's Wife Says Concerned About Conditions of His Detention in UK Prison

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Stella Moris, the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, told Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia on Friday she was concerned about her husband's state of health and conditions of his detention in a UK prison.

"A third of prisoners in his wing are charged with manslaughter or premeditated murder. He shares a space with very dangerous people. Some of them are mentally ill. So I am very concerned about his well-being as a well-known person," Moris was quoted as saying by the media outlet.

Moreover, Assange himself is experiencing serious mental health problems, which are exacerbated by inappropriate prison conditions, according to his wife.

"When he arrived in the prison, he faced serious risk of suicide and spent six months in an infirmary, an extreme form of isolation. People there are either dying or are in an state of acute mental disorder. Some prisoners engaged in cleaning saw him there and made internal requests about him being transferred [to another chamber]," Moris told the Spanish newspaper.

She also said that prison guards not only did not treat Assange like someone special, but even on the contrary, neglected his rights in a certain sense.

"He hasn't had any family day since he ended up there. Once a month there is a day when you can spend five hours with your children. They have never put him on the list," Moris added.

WikiLeaks was founded by Assange on October 4, 2006, but rose to prominence in 2010 when it began to publish large-scale leaks of classified government information, especially from the United States. Since April 2019, Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison in London while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act. If convicted, the WikiLeaks founder is facing 175 years in prison. In December 2022, he applied to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge his extradition.