The point is that Sweden might very well have seemed perfectly safe despite those past actions until a prosecutor took those steps which still seems exceedingly odd.
To have one prosecutor say there was no case to answer, only to have another prosecutor specifically go after the case and reopen it, is uncommon to say the least.
Assange spent 26 more days in the country and then flew out hours after his arrest warrant was signed.
(ii) there's nothing particularly unusual about a more senior prosecutor overriding an earlier decision of a more junior prosecutor following an appeal from the alleged victims' lawyer and an interview with the accused. Especially when it's a one-party's word against another's case and the accusing party had initially seemed reluctant to pursue a prosecution.
You are spreading many falsehoods here, first of all, it was NOT a junior prosecutor who dropped the case, chief prosectutor Eva Finné was the one who first handled it and immediately dropped it due to there not being any grounds for a case.
It was a junior prosector Karin Rosander who then suddenly brought the case up again, at this point (20/10 2010) Assange WAS questioned by the police.
The day after this, senior prosecutor Marianne Ny decided to restart the preliminary investigation.
At this point Assange left the country, three weeks later, Marianne Ny filed an arrest warrant on Assange for further questioning.
Assange agreed to be interviewed by video link, something Swedish prosecutors have done many times before, by Marianne Ny refused and demanded that he'd return to sweden for further questioning.
This for accusations which even well known feminists working daily against rape say are laughable:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/interpol-the-worlds...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/08/wikileaks-rape...
The prosecutor who dismissed the case was senior, and not junior in any sense of the word, rank or age.
You say it's not unusual (in Sweden). I've never seen a single example of another rape case which was dismissed and reopened in this manner. Can you give a few examples of other re-opened Swedish rape cases, seeing that it's "not unusual" from your point of view.
> The prosecutor who dismissed the case was senior, and not junior in any sense of the word, rank or age.
Marianne Ny was Överåklagare and she was senior to Eva Finnè who had the title Chefsåklagare. According to her, she reopened the case because new relevant information had become available.
> Can you give a few examples of other re-opened Swedish rape cases, seeing that it's "not unusual" from your point of view.
It's rare but it happens: http://www.nsd.se/nyheter/forundersokning-om-valdtakt-aterup... https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/forundersokning-om-va... http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artik...
Because I have seen only one reopened, but I happen to know about exactly one, so I wouldn't presume to talk about it's irregularity.
Whether or not it was unusual enough to justify Assanges fears is irrelevant. The question is whether or not they were enough to cause him to start fearing something else was going on.
Where would you suggest he should go?
UK courts have a long history of letting extradition cases take years and/or denying extradition, and UK courts have a history of reacting to political pressure by standing firm rather than yielding. There are few places where I'd trust the legal system more.
Which other countries do you think have courts willing to stand up to political pressure, and where the US can't or won't just pick him off the streets without causing a major diplomatic crisis, and that would be somewhere you'd be able to get visas and where you'd want to live?
I can't think of many countries that'd fit those criterias. Most of the places I can think of where I'd believe the US would be unlikely to be able to get at someone are places I'd rather not want to live.
But the UK would be high on my list of places where I'd feel the risk would be low.
I have heard people say things like "Sweden has co-operated with NATO in [....]". Maybe Sweden does co-operate with NATO, but it's not a member and the UK is.
The UK courts might seem wonderful in merry old England, but just look at what happened in Northern Ireland, and you'll see a different face of the British legal system. Interment without trial, torture, extrajudicial killing, all of UK citizens on UK soil.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/16/world/europe/uk-us-mckinnon-ex...
The UK has a history of both courts and the Home Office denying extraditions. Theresa May is a "law and order" authoritarian to boot, but even she is not prepared to fall over herself to satisfy US extradition requests.
The law is the law, and Assange stood accused of a serious crime in Sweden. The idea that Sweden would simply forget about it because Assange had holed himself up in an embassy for five years seems misplaced.
It is a rather common meme to accuse Swedes of not conforming to concepts of British/U.S. law (common law system) when Swedish has another system, not any worse but somewhat different in the usage of terms like "charge".
I'm not expected Sweden to be like the UK/US - I'm Norwegian, and our system is much closer to the Swedish and to the UK/US systems.
I am expecting a prosecutor to not stubbornly refuse to take actions for fours years while claiming it to be impossible, while being contradicted by legal experts, just to suddenly decide it's possible after all.
If that's too much to ask of Swedish prosectors, you have a big problem with your legal justice system.
Can you clarify this? I'm honestly confused - the topic seems to be the refusal and then acceptance of an in-embassy interview. I could understand if the refusal was a procedural issue, but in that case why was it eventually accepted?
UK is hardly a bastion of freedom and liberty.
But the question here is where Assange would have reason to feel safer in the UK than in Sweden, and just like many other places through history, a place can both be incredibly safe for one group of people and unsafe for other groups of people at the same time.
Part of that fear was presumably based in the unusual persistence of the Swedish prosecutor, which implied something odd was going on. But that "something odd" might simply have been the prosecutors ambitions.
In any case, UK courts have a history of taking extradition hearings very seriously, and there are ample opportunities to appeal both to UK courts, the ECHR, and (for the time being) to the ECJ, so it'd by no means be easy to get him from the UK direct.