I would assume the average government gives asylum seekers a limited amount of transition aid (in finding housing, language instruction, buying initial food), and some of this may be provided by NGOs. Any costs incurred by the government may or may not go through general spending, but I would expect leverages domestic service provision (i.e. subsidized housing exists for non-asylum seekers and is leveraged to provide some for asylum seekers). Then after the first few years of asylum I would expect the government to have basically no further obligations to the person in question.

On the other hand, Assange's living costs are wholly paid by the government of Ecuador and presumably come from the operational budget of the embassy. Also, the embassy itself is going to be physically limited in size. I don't live in London but I did live in an Embassy Row in another OECD country for a few years and many countries had embassies not much bigger than a 3 or 4 bedroom house.

I definitely agree Ecuador, conditional on granting him asylum at all, should extend to Assange the same benefits they do to other long-term asylum grantees who live in their embassies worldwide. But I suspect the set of other people in that situation is cardinality 0. That's not Assange's fault, or Ecuador's or really anyone's. It'd surely be better for everyone involved if they could fly him to territorial Ecuador. But it is what it is.

Sure, but there's not a class of cases where there is a discernable generic rule without sui generis considerations in virtually every case. Extended asylum in a diplomatic facility is an extraordinary situation, not a routine occurence with established standard practice.

Wait so he should be "accommodated like anyone else" but doesn't have to behave "like anyone else" would? I think the great majority of people who would qualify as "anyone else" would go to great lengths to show their appreciation and gratitude towards their host of the last six years. Instead he's suing them? What I find so surprising is that for someone who is so geo-politically engaged just how poor his grasp of everyday interpersonal politics is. This person is a guest.

Back here on earth, USA Senators from both parties regularly accuse Assange of all manner of perfidy. They've all got incriminating shit on file at the TLAs, and regular whinging about Assange or Snowden or whomever is table stakes. When Bloody 'Gina gets her hooks into this guy, who besides Rand Paul will complain?

Any links to famous cases, or is it all secret squirrel that we can't be trusted to know about?

It is fairly common for indictments of persons not already in custody to be sealed initially if there may be issues with effecting arrest, and sometimes for other reasons (e.g., to avoid compromising parallel investigations). The grand jury process is intended to enforce probable cause requirements, not to provide notice to the accused so that they might better flee arrest.

Several of the indictments by the Special Counsel’s office, for some famous examples, were originally sealed.