{"id":24264,"date":"2022-12-31T14:07:38","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T19:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=24264"},"modified":"2022-12-31T14:09:37","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T19:09:37","slug":"julian-assange-to-ask-for-prison-leave-for-vivienne-westwood-funeral-says-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/12\/31\/julian-assange-to-ask-for-prison-leave-for-vivienne-westwood-funeral-says-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Julian Assange to ask for prison leave for Vivienne Westwood funeral, says wife"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will request leave from the high-security Belmarsh Prison to attend Dame Vivienne Westwood’s funeral, his wife says.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Dame Vivienne was a vocal supporter and friend of Mr Assange for more than a decade, famously protesting against his incarceration suspended in a bird cage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

She died in London on Thursday aged 81.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Mr Assange is fighting extradition to the US on charges related to the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

His wife Stella Assange, who has described Dame Vivienne as “irreplaceable”, told the BBC her husband and the designer had a close personal relationship.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Having known Mr Assange for more than ten years, she said Dame Vivienne was a strong supporter of WikiLeaks’ work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

“I know that Julian would want to honour her,” said Ms Assange, adding that her husband’s solicitor had been asked to put in a request for him to attend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Prison service spokesman Alan Selby told the BBC that it was unlikely such a request would be granted as this kind of leave was only meant for close relatives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

However, there was no explicit ban, he said, and it was up to prison governors to decide on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

A relevant guidance document states that applications should “balance security considerations with those of decency, and should only be refused on security grounds”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Mrs Assange insisted there was “no obvious reason” why the prison would not be able to grant the request, arguing there were “good compassionate reasons why it should”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Details of Dame Vivienne’s funeral have not yet been made public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

The Derbyshire-born designer made her name with her controversial punk and new wave styles in the 1970s and went on to dress a number of big stars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Mr Assange himself described her as a “pillar of the anti-establishment”,\u00a0in comments released by his wife on Twitter.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

He saluted Dame Vivienne’s creativity and friendship, saying she would be “missed terribly by me and many others”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

One headline-grabbing show of support for the Wikileaks founder saw Dame Vivienne suspending herself inside a large cage outside the Old Bailey in 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

She condemned her friend’s detention as a “stitch-up”, and led other protesters in chanting for his release.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Dame Vivienne also designed the wedding dress seen during\u00a0Julian and Stella Assange’s small wedding ceremony in Belmarsh earlier this year.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

She cemented her friendship with Mr Assange by visiting him regularly during his long stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London as well as in Belmarsh, Mrs Assange said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

The two saw in the 2015 New Year together at the embassy, she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Mr Assange took refuge there for seven years, seeking asylum to avoid extradition. As well as his work with Wikileaks, he faced a rape allegation in Sweden. That investigation was later dropped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

But he was removed from the embassy in 2019 and imprisoned, and now faces a US trial over a leak of military information.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

A request to hand him over has been approved by the UK government. However,\u00a0Mr Assange is battling this<\/a>, and has said the case against him is politically motivated.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will request leave from the high-security Belmarsh Prison to attend Dame Vivienne Westwood’s funeral, his wife says. Dame Vivienne was a vocal supporter and friend of Mr Assange for more than […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[6224,466,1240,9025,275],"class_list":{"0":"post-24264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-belmarsh-prison","10":"tag-julian-assange","11":"tag-old-bailey","12":"tag-vivienne-westwood","13":"tag-wikileaks","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24267,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24264\/revisions\/24267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}