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