After years locked in the shadow of the London prison of Belmarsh, Julian Assange He wanders the forests of southeastern Australia, bathes in the ocean and learns to raise children who once only knew their father as a prisoner.
His wife, the Swedish-Spanish lawyer Stella Assangerecently returned to London for a week, leaving the WikiLeaks co-founder alone to look after his sons, Gabriel, seven, and Max, five. So he was a single parent for a week, the British newspaper reported. The Times Assange’s stepbrother, the filmmaker Gabriel Shipton. Everyone survived, he joked.
The family is rumoured to be living in a secret location on the New South Wales coast, south of Sydney. It’s a region of lush dairy farms, towering forests and often empty beaches, known for their sparkling waves and white sands.
Assange has not spoken publicly about his new life as a free man in his native Australia since leaving Belmarsh prison in late June. He left Stansted Airport aboard a luxury Bombardier business jet bound for Sydney via Saipan, a US territory in the Pacific where he made a brief stopover to plead guilty to violating US espionage laws, a step Washington had required to approve his release deal.
Assange, according to his half-brother, has been slowly adjusting to freedom after seven years locked away in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, followed by five years in Belmarsh that undermined his mental and physical health. He is adjusting to life, eating proper food, exercising, sunbathing and embracing his new life, Shipton told The Associated Press. The Times. He’s working on, you know, rebuilding his life, essentially.
A month ago, Stella Assange, a human rights lawyer who met and developed a relationship with the WikiLeaks founder while he was staying at the Ecuadorian embassy where the couple conceived their children, suggested that the new experience of living together for the first time, and in a new country, presented challenges.
Julian’s release has brought with it major changes and logistical challenges that we are overcoming, she said on her website. And we still have medium and long-term decisions to make. We are taking a break from stellaassange.com while we get our bearings.
Julian is recovering and experiencing the wild and stunning Australian natural environment. The things he longed for from his cell in Belmarsh prison and that seemed unattainable are now a reality: swimming in the ocean, hiking in the wilderness and travelling around Australia. We can finally be together as a family, which brings us immense joy. Time is what has been stolen from us, especially from Julian, and now we enjoy it as much as we can, he wrote in the post.
A photo of the family by the beach, believed by some to have been taken in Mimosa Rocks National Park near the fishing town of Bega, more than 420 kilometres south of Sydney, accompanied the post.
It is not clear how the family pays for his living expenses. Moves are afoot to clear the way for Assange to earn money and alleviate what Shipton describes as his very precarious position.
Shipton is leading a campaign to persuade the United States to pardon Assange, which would also have the benefit of lifting restrictions on the proceeds of crime that are likely to prevent Assange from earning income from speaking and writing about his past activities with WikiLeaks.
So there are proceeds of crime, which will impact Julian’s ability to, you know, feed his family and make a living by selling a story or talking about what happened or something like that, Shipton said. That could move him into a profits of crime type of situation.
Later this month, his half-brother will travel from Australia to Washington again, his seventh visit this year, to continue to press for a presidential pardon for Julian Assange.
