Julian Assange and the deep flaw in our extradition laws

You could almost hear the rejoicing in Whitehall on Friday morning when the High Court cleared the way for Julian Assange to be extradited to the US, rejecting a plea that he was too mentally frail. The man has, after all, been a thorn in the administration’s side for 11 years: 18 months contesting his rendition to Sweden, followed by seven embarrassing years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, and then two-and-a-half years in Belmarsh fighting extradition to the US on espionage charges.

But there is one disquieting feature. The offences he is charged with in the US are not ordinary charges of criminality, like the accusations he faced in Sweden, but are essentially state crimes: in this case espionage and the betrayal of US state secrets. Should we be giving our aid to other countries to enforce such laws?

When a regular system of extradition was introduced in Britain in 1870, it was regarded as axiomatic that the answer to this question had to be ‘No’.