For years, Julian Assange’s opponents argued that the rationale for his remaining in the Ecuadorean embassy in London — that the United States would seek to extradite him in relation to the Chelsea Manning material the moment he left the building — was false. Assange just wanted to avoid facing allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, they insisted — however inconsistent, strange and politicised the process around those allegations actually was — and the possibility of extradition to the US was a fiction, a distraction.