“Defendants on bail up and down the country, and requested persons facing extradition, come to court to face the consequences of their own choices. He should have the courage to do so too,” she said. Arbuthnot was weighing the public interest in pursuing Assange for refusing to surrender to police while on bail. Julian Assange has lost his bid to overturn a warrant for his arrest. Credit:AP It is a criminal offence for someone on bail to refuse to surrender to police without “reasonable cause” - and Assange refused to leave the embassy despite a court order for his arrest after an extradition order to Sweden was upheld on appeal in 2012. Loading

But Assange’s lawyer Mark Summers QC had argued that the arrest warrant should be dropped because it was not in the interests of “justice and proportionality” to bring an action against Assange. He said Assange had already undergone enough punishment as a result of staying in the small embassy for more than five years. Arbuthnot accepted that Assange has a “serious tooth problem and is in need of dental treatment and needs an MRI scan on a shoulder which has been described as frozen”, and that he has depression and suffers respiratory infections. However “Mr Assange’s health problems could be much worse,” she said.

In December 2015, the United Nation’s Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) ruled that Assange was subject to arbitrary detention, in breach of his human rights. They held that he had been denied due process and a fair trial while he was in Wandsworth Prison, then during 550 days under house arrest, while he was appealing against his extradition to Sweden. They said the deprivation of his liberty continued while he was in the embassy. Loading However Arbuthnot said the WGAD had “based its conclusions on some misunderstandings” and the restrictions on Assange’s freedom had been “according to law and proportionate”. She said there was a distinction between Wandsworth prison and living in the embassy - he could leave whenever he wishes, he is free to receive “it would seem an unlimited number” of unsupervised visits, he can choose the food he eats and the time he sleeps and exercises, he can sit on the balcony to take the air, and he is free to use a computer and mobile phone.

“I suspect if one were to ask one of the men incarcerated in Wandsworth Prison whether conditions in the Ecuadorian Embassy were akin to a remand in custody, the prisoner would dispute the Working Group’s assertion,” Arbuthnot said. His house arrest had been proposed by his own legal team, including leading human rights specialist Geoffrey Robertson QC. “The court - rightly as it turned out - had a fear Mr Assange would not surrender himself to the court and to ensure his attendance the conditions suggested by his lawyers were put in place.” Assange’s lawyers had argued he had good reason to fear rendition - rather than extradition - to the US where some officials were calling for the death penalty. “I do not find that Mr Assange’s fears were reasonable,” Arbuthnot said. “I do not accept that Sweden would have rendered Mr Assange to the United States. If that had happened there would have been a diplomatic crisis.”