Stella Assange, the wife of the WikiLeaks founder, said their children are “not yet” aware that their father has been released from prison and the couple are looking forward to starting a “new chapter” after his release from prison.
Julian Assange walked out of Belmarsh prison at 5pm on Monday and was taken to Stansted Airport before boarding a flight to Bangkok which has landed for refuelling.
He will appear in court on Wednesday in Saipan, a US territory that is part of the Northern Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific. He is expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified US national defence information.
Asked if she had told their children, Ms Assange told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “Not yet. All I told them was that there was a big surprise and on the morning that we left, I told them we were heading to the airport and we got on the plane and I told them that we were going to visit our family, their cousin, their grandfather and so on.”
