So that settles it then - everyone's to blame except Julian Assange

The fugitive pulled a masterstroke by referring his case to a UN panel gullible enough to embrace it

The right to insufferable superiority is not specifically enshrined in the UN declaration - and yet it continues to be extended to Julian Assange, along with a load of other rights and due processes that somehow escaped the attentions of the UN panel convened to consider his case. I don't want to go out on too much of a limb here, but my sense is that the finest legal minds are not drawn to UN panels as a career path. For those who regard the prefix "United Nations" as the gold standard, the holes in the working group's report will be pretty hard to take. Perhaps UN panellists are like UN goodwill ambassadors, and even Geri Halliwell could be one.

The working group has concluded that the WikiLeaks founder has been arbitrarily detained, including under house arrest, and that the diplomatic asylum offered him by Ecuador somehow binds the UK to give Julian Assange free passage - which is almost right, except he was never under house arrest, there has been nothing arbitrary at any stage of the various legal procedures with which he has been involved, and the UK has no obligation to recognize diplomatic asylum granted within its borders by another state. In fact, that is probably an Ecuadorian misuse of the inviolability of diplomatic premises. Still, as Meat Loaf almost sang, nought out of three ain't bad.

All in all, I haven't felt this sarcastically torn since the Oscar Pistorius trial, when being asked to choose between a convoluted and contradictory tale of victimhood, and the possibility that the defendant was just another one of the many guys who kill their partner every week. 

It is notable with Assange that the higher he has gone in his "quest for justice", the smaller he has looked. Even back in his pomp he could never quite carry himself off - that picture of him drinking a dry martini to celegrate being granted bail was more licence to spill than licence to kill. He can issue limitless portentous statements, and declaim from all the Juliet balconies he likes, but for my money he looks more and more like just another guy failing to face up to a rape allegation. 

In one sense, this latest flare-up of Knightsbridge's Assange condition will have caught many by surprise. The chronic reports had died down so completely in recent months that it was initially odd to be reminded that Assange was still there. A bit like when Ariel Sharon was in the coma for all those years. Even the police had said their goodbyes, announcing last October that they were standing down the 24-hour watch on the embassy.

As for what was going on inside, someone who knew once described Assange's billet to me. It seemed his luvvie visitors, being possessed of good fortunes but frequently limited imaginations, tended to stop off at the next door grocers (Harrods) and buy him a hamper. Consequently the walls of his room were practically lined with the things, meaning he was always able to offer visitors a quarter bottle of whisky or perhaps a tin of pate. I pictured the hampers eventually closing in on him entirely - the other sort of wicker man.

Still, back to this judgement. Given the UN panel is made up entirely of academics, seemingly devoid of judicial experience, nor any in wither public international law or asylum/refugee law, its institutional competence verges on the intriguing. Far too grand to engage with the reasoning of the various courts that have already considered (and rejected) many of the arguments against extradition, it instead opted for a mish-mash that has poleaxed many senior figures with a wealth of experience in those aforementioned areas.

Contrary to their report's implication, for example, Assange's initial 10 days in solitary have no bearing on his bail, much less his sojourn in the Ecuadorian embassy. As for their almost-amusing diagnosis of "house arrest", the only possible rejoinder, if you'll forgive the legalese, is: Do. Me. A. Favor. Assange's bail conditions - I'm sorry if the term is confusing to the panel - saw him placed with an electronic tag in a stately home from which he was free to come and go all day long. But he opted to skip bail and do one to the embassy.

Obviously the UN panel is now demanding the UK and Swedish governments offer Assange compensation, given his ordeal. I see the Ecuadorians are too (rather more understandably, given theirs. As previously mentioned, I always wondered whether Assange's unique gift for driving away his friends would result in a diplomatic version of that Poirot where all the characters dunnit, with everyone from the ambassador to the janitor somehow involved in his demise).

On another point, meanwhile, is there a bit of a tell in the fact that Assange has not petitioned the European court of human rights on the arbitrary detention angle up to this point? Perhaps his suspicion - doubtless well-founded - was that they wouldn't be having any of it, and any ruling to this effect would have very likely jeopardized his position with the Ecuadorians, who would have found it far harder to breach the decision of a neutral supranational court such as the ECHR than the local courts of "adversary" states such as the UK and Sweden. One can't help feeling he went to a panel whose results are non-legally binding to hedge his bets, should they find against him. Off the back of that - and insisting of course that the UK and Swedish governments accept they are legally binding - he is now threatening to he to the ECHR, though whether he will actually risk it we shall see.

And so to Sweden, a country Assange regarded as so perilously likely to FedEx him to the US that he traveled there frequently until he was accused of rape in it. The UN report is rather hard lines for Sweden. The country's law insists that an interview with a potential suspect is conducted before any charge is brought in an investigation, and its arguably obstinate failure to move the mountain to Muhammad - and interview Assange on rape or sexual assault allegations in whichever British country pile or desirable London postcode he fancied - turns out to have been the over-principled petard on which it has been hoist.

The conclusion has to be that if a suspect can engineer a long enough delay, by hook or by crook, the fault - indeed, the pseudo-international crime - becomes someone else's. Then again, as far as Assange is concerned, when has anything ever not been?