To be fair it's high profile because it's known where he is and that he's attempting to avoid capture. Not because he's from wikileaks and he might get extradited, those merely gave him the celebrity clout to pull the stunt in the first place.

If they actually gave up and he popped up in Ecuador and he's suddenly like 'haha, the british police, usually bunch of pricks', it would be embarrassing for the whole of the UK.

So it's a bit of a catch-22 position.

EDIT: Whoops, wrote wikipedia instead of wikileaks

FWIW, that ignorant bit of Wikipedia vs Wikileaks confusion has resulted in causing harm to people affiliated with Wikipedia when US customs officers have suffered from it.

My elderly father the other day told me that he thought the work I was doing with Wikimedia was related to "that wikileaks fella". Of course I corrected him, but I'm a little bit more accepting of the mistake!

Honest typo rather than ignorance.

What association does he have with Wikipedia?

You realize that "wiki" refers to a type of CMS software, like a blog or web forum, correct?

Yes.

WikiLeaks. Not Wikipedia. Very different things.