In this file photo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen speaking on the balcony of the Embassy of Ecuador in London, the UK, on May 19, 2017. (By AFP)

A new report says that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange secretly fathered two children with one of his lawyers while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The Daily Mail reported on Saturday that Stella Morris, a South African-born lawyer and Swedish national, started a relationship with Assange in 2015 and the two have been engaged since 2017.

Morris has said their children - Gabriel, aged 2, and his one-year-old brother, Max - were conceived while Assange was hiding out to avoid extradition to the United States, where he faces espionage charges over the leaking of thousands of classified US intelligence documents.

The couple, as the British newspaper reported, managed to keep their relationship secret from the Ecuadorean staff and diplomats, who for seven years gave the Australian whistle-blower refuge at the embassy.

Morris said she had decided to reveal the relationship and the existence of their sons because she feared for the life and health condition of her fiancé. Assange has been in a high-security prison in London since the Ecuadoran Embassy expelled him a year ago.

The Swedish lawyer said she is worried about 48-year-old Assange as the coronavirus pandemic is spreading in prison populations and in Belmarsh Prison in particular, where Assange is held and where one inmate has already died of COVID-19, according to the Daily Mail.

I am now terrified I will not see him alive again, Morris said. I have lived quietly and privately, raising Gabriel and Max on my own and longing for the day we could be together as a family. Now I have to speak out because I can see his life is on the brink.

Julian’s poor physical health puts him at serious risk, like many other vulnerable people, and I don’t believe he will survive infection with coronavirus, she added.

Medical and health officials have already expressed alarm about the deteriorating health conditions of Assange in Belmarsh, and supporters have held rallies to demand his release.

Assange was arrested in London in April last year after he was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy due to pressure from Washington. The activist is still fighting the US bid to have him extradited from Britain on espionage charges related to his work.

The Australian citizen is currently serving a 50-week sentence in the United Kingdom for skipping bail. London is to restart court hearings over his extradition to the US on April 20.

Assange used WikiLeaks to publish classified documents online, including military and diplomatic files in 2010 about US bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that proved highly embarrassing to the US government.

The whistle-blower faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison in the US if convicted of all of the charges brought against him there.

SOURCE: PRESS TV