Campaigners calling for the release of Julian Assange will stage events on Wednesday to mark the 1,000 days the WikiLeaks founder has spent in prison.

His supporters will gather outside Belmarsh Prison in London, where he is being held as the United States continues to attempt to extradite him.

His fiancee, Stella Moris, renewed her call for his release, saying he has spent longer in Belmarsh than many prisoners sentenced for violent crimes.

She said: “His young children, aged two and four, have no memory of their father outside the highest security prison of the UK.

“Julian is simply held at the request of the US government while they continue to abuse the US-UK extradition treaty for political ends.

“The US government is trying to put an Australian publisher on trial in a US national security court, where he faces a 175-year sentence and imprisonment in conditions of torture and total isolation, simply because he was doing his job.

“Because he received true information about the victims and the crimes committed by US operations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq from Chelsea Manning, and he published it.”

She said that as long as he remains in prison, Assange will be a political prisoner, and his “indefinite incarceration” will kill him unless it is brought to an end.

She added: “In those 1,000 days, Julian has been held in extraordinary isolation for part of the time, faced two Covid shutdowns and, in October, he suffered a stress-induced stroke during his latest hearing.

“His lawyers have complained about the limited access they have to their client which has undermined his defence. His requests to attend his own hearings have been refused, and when he has been permitted to attend, his requests to sit next to his lawyers have also been refused.”