For Julian Assange, the wait continues. The pause can be counted as a small victory in the long battle to fight his extradition to the United States. But it is one of the many shameful issues in this most shameful of sagas that his waiting room is a cell in a high security prison where he has been held for the past five years, despite having been convicted of nothing.
The high court decision issued by Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Johnson means that the US has been given a short time to offer “assurances” as to how his trial would be conducted and that the death penalty would not be imposed. Astonishingly it has previously been unable to provide them. Assange’s defence team will then be allowed to challenge those “assurances” issued by a country with a long record of ignoring many of the basic rights of anyone deemed to be threatening the security of the state in any way.
