The Kafkaesque ordeal Julian Assange has undergone since seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London 12 years ago has dragged on far too long.
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After being forcibly removed from the embassy - sans dignity and sans cat - five years ago, the Wikileaks founder has been on remand in Britain's infamous Belmarsh High Security Prison. He has been kept in isolation for much of the time and has limited access to visitors.
His mental and physical condition has deteriorated to such a marked extent he is unable to participate in court hearings even by video link.
Mr Assange's family, friends and many supporters fear that if his ordeal, which bears comparison with the travails suffered by the "man in the iron mask" made famous by Alexander Dumas, is allowed to continue he will almost certainly die in prison.
And what is all of this going to achieve? What benefit does the United States hope to accomplish by successfully prosecuting and then incarcerating this now very frail 52-year-old?
The ruthless pugnacity with which the Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations have pressed ahead with persecution of a man whose principal sin was to have exposed US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq is excessive.
That's particularly so given Chelsea Manning, the then US soldier who leaked the classified documents to Wikileaks, only served seven years of a 35 year sentence. Her sentence was commuted by Barack Obama in 2017 when Joe Biden was vice-president.
Surely if Manning was entitled to clemency then the same should apply to Julian Assange. While the US has claimed repeatedly at various extradition hearings people "disappeared" as a result of Wikileaks's data dump that has never been backed up by hard evidence in the courtroom.
This week Mr Assange narrowly escaped the possibility of being put almost immediately on a plane to the United States when the High Court of England and Wales granted him leave to appeal an earlier decision that would see him handed over to American custody.
His application was upheld, rather ironically, because the US refused to guarantee Mr Assange would be allowed to invoke America's first amendment right to freedom of speech if he was called on to answer 17 espionage charges and one charge of "computer crime" in that country.
The best the Americans could offer was that Mr Assange would be able to "seek to rely" on the first amendment. The final decision would rest with the court.
Given if Mr Assange was convicted he could be facing a sentence of up to 175 years this just isn't good enough. If America wants to do this so badly the least it could do would be to guarantee Mr Assange access to the same defences any US citizen could invoke.
That said, the attempt by the US to have it every which way but loose played out in Mr Assange's favour. If they had provided the guarantee the application for the right to appeal would not have been granted, placing Mr Assange at risk of sudden extradition.
The fly in the ointment is if the US tries to circumvent that appeal by giving an undertaking he would be able to invoke the first amendment as a defence.
While that would be potentially embarrassing given the previous position was allegedly informed by expert legal opinion it's certainly not out of the question.
While Mr Assange's team can chalk up a small win this week their client is unlikely to be out of the woods, or prison, any time soon.
The quickest way that could happen would be if President Biden granted an act of clemency in recognition of what the Wikileaks founder has already endured.
