Julian Assange’s wife revealed he wants to swim in the ocean every day and teach his children to catch crabs as he landed in Australia as a free man.
The WikiLeaks founder negotiated a plea deal with the United States in which he was convicted of espionage in exchange for safe passage to his home country.
Assange, 52, had been persecuted by US authorities for 14 years after the disclosure of thousands of classified military documents in 2010.
He spent more than five years in a high-security British prison after seven years sheltered in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
During his captivity, he met his wife, lawyer Stella, 40, with whom he secretly had two children.
Assange appeared on The Project on Wednesday night shortly before her husband landed in Canberra.
She was asked about her husband’s new freedom and what her first words were.
“That he missed me and he couldn’t wait to see me later tonight and all the things we’re going to do in the next few days, weeks,” Assange told the program.
Julian Assange and his wife Stella hug each other after he landed in Canberra around 7.30pm on Wednesday (pictured)
“He wants to go swimming in the ocean every day and he wants to teach our children how to fish for crabs… I think he wants to go to the beach,” Mrs Assange told the programme.
Mrs Assange said she “cried tears of happiness” when her husband was released without parole or supervision by a US federal court on the Pacific island of Saipan.
“It was a moment of liberation. “I couldn’t believe it and I was also sad not to be there,” she added.
The South African-born lawyer said she had been preparing her two young children for their father’s release.
“I’ve been talking about the many things we will do when I return home,” he said.
‘That we will go to Australia together and when 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 will do.’
Stella Assange (pictured) said she “cried tears of happiness” when her husband was released without parole 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 night.
Julian Assange spoke on the phone with his wife an hour before landing in Australia
Assange said it would take time to get used to meeting each other in the free world after years of restrictions and captivity.
“These types of restrictions are really internalized,” he explained.
‘I think it will be a process and I have spoken with people who have been confined and with their families and others, they all say the same thing.
‘You need space. You need time. You need to process things. Someone said yesterday that freedom comes slowly.
Assange met his wife, lawyer Stella, 40, during his captivity and secretly fathered two children with her.
Assange has been held in one of the UK’s highest security prisons since April 2019. He is pictured in May 2019.
Assange acknowledged that it may be “premature” to talk about a pardon for her husband, but insisted that his conviction for espionage sets a dangerous precedent.
“It has criminalised standard journalistic activity and set a precedent that can be used in the future against other members of the press,” he added.
The couple embraced each other as Assange’s private jet landed in Canberra about 7.30pm on Wednesday.
His criminal conviction for espionage means he is now banned from entering the United States.
After falling out with the South American nation’s rulers, he was dragged from his safe haven in 2019 and locked up in Belmarsh while the United States attempted to extradite him.
Assange has been a wanted man since 2010, when WikiLeaks published 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 swathes of diplomatic cables.
In 2012, as authorities closed in on him over that and “credible and reliable” sexual crime allegations from a woman in Sweden, he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he remained for seven years in often ridiculous circumstances.
Ecuador eventually tired of him being there, revoked his asylum and kicked him out, resulting in his immediate arrest and imprisonment in the United Kingdom while fighting extradition to the United States.
The US government only counts the five years he spent in Belmarsh as Assange’s sentence served, but his lawyer argued that the full 14 years counted.