| Stella Assange | |
| Other Names: | Stella Moris, Stella Assange |
| Birth Name: | Sara Gonzalez Devant |
| Birth Date: | 20 November 1983 |
| Birth Place: | Johannesburg, Transvaal, South Africa |
| Children: | 2 |
| Education: | SOAS University of London (BA) University of Oxford (MSc) Complutense University of Madrid (LLM) |
| Occupation: | Lawyer |
Stella Assange (née Sara Gonzalez Devant; born 1983) is a Swedish-Spanish lawyer. Throughout her career, she has been an international advocate for human rights, most prominently in the case of her husband, Julian Assange.[1] She changed her name first to Stella Moris in 2012 and later to Stella Moris-Smith Robertson.
Sara Gonzalez Devant was born in 1983 in Johannesburg, South Africa, to a Spanish mother and a Swedish father of Cuban heritage. Her mother is a theatre director and her father is an architect, town planner, and artist. Both of Assange's parents were known for participating in the Medu Art Ensemble, an anti-apartheid artist collective in Botswana.[2] Throughout her youth, Devant lived in Botswana, Lesotho, Sweden, and Spain. In 1985, during a raid into Gaborone conducted by the South African Defence Force, a family friend of the Devants, Thami Mnyele, was killed. This act of state-sponsored killing left a defining impression on the Devant family.
After attending an international school in Lesotho, Assange proceeded to earn a degree in law and politics at SOAS University of London, a Master's of Science in refugee law at Oxford, and a Master's in public international law while studying at the Complutense University of Madrid.
Devant has authored a number of articles for the independent publisher and magazine, New Internationalist.[3]
In 2011, Stella Assange was hired by Julian Assange's legal team to help prevent his extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations. As a result of the team's success in delaying and ultimately preventing his extradition, the legal procedures were eventually dropped.[4]
For the sake of additional security while working with Julian Assange, she changed her name to Stella Moris in 2012.
She has been on Julian Assange's legal team throughout his captivity, including during his asylum period in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London (2012–2019) and his incarceration in Belmarsh Prison (2019–2024). In reflecting on these legal battles, Stella Assange noted that her multilingualism in Swedish and Spanish was indispensable when liasing with the Swedish and Ecuadorian authorities.[5]
On October 10, 2022, Stella Assange and thousands of others locked arms in a human chain around the Parliament of the United Kingdom to demand Julian Assange's freedom and the cessation of any extradition attempts.[6]
In 2023, Assange met the Pope and discussed her husband's situation.[7]
On June 24, 2024, Stella Assange released a statement saying that Julian Assange would be set free.[8]
In 2015, she began a relationship with Julian Assange.[9]
During Assange's seven-year period of political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the couple conceived two children, the first being born in 2017, and the second in 2019. Tracy Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort and the rapper M.I.A. are the children's godmothers.
On March 23, 2022, the couple were married in a ceremony that took place in Belmarsh Prison.[10] Assange is Catholic and had a priest of her Church, the chaplain for the prison, bless the marriage.[11] [12]