It's hard to believe, but in the midst of the pandemic other things have been happening,

and one of them concerns the future of the man from WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.

In 2010, Assange was Time's Person of the Year. Ten years later, we're at Belmarsh Magistrates Court.

Assange is still fighting against extradition to the United States, having spent most of the last

seven years hold up in the Ecuadorian embassy. But this week he shared one of the strangest secrets

of those years.

Well, his secret fiance decided to reveal his secret family to a tabloid newspaper. It had become almost impossible for them to keep the relationship secret.

If he is sent to the US, the charges couldn't be more serious. But could Julian's new family make it more likely that he stays in Britain?

You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times.

I'm David Aronovich.

Today, the future of Julia Assange.

I was starting out in journalism. I was on work experience for the for the telegraph. John Simpson is now the

crime correspondent at the times but he's been following the Julian Assange story

for over 10 years since the very beginning of his career.

I should say at this point that I spoke to John before coronavirus had changed all our lives.

But at the end of this episode you'll hear our conversation from this week about the latest revelations.

I was led to a room with glass walls and every inch of the walls was covered so that you couldn't see in or out.

Everyone outside that room was told that the coverage inside was for a royal wedding. Once inside I was

led past some of the paper's most prominent reporters and told that we would be working on

around 250,000 diplomatic cables that had been leaked by Julian Assange's

website WikiLeaks.

My task was to redact those cables.

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