Fascinating how this varies between nations and cultures. In Norwegian case law, refusing to explain yourself can be considered indirect evidence of guilt.

I remember a report from a recent Norwegian criminal trial, where the judge himself warned the accused that refusing to give an explanation could reflect badly on the question of whether she was guilty or not.

In the US, the Fifth Amendment protects the opposite: you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself in the US, and choosing to take the Fifth cannot be considered evidence of guilt. There's some evidence that, in practice, this isn't always true, but judges are required to clearly explain this to jurors.

I wonder how much this has to do with a nation's format of policing and especially interrogation.

The legal protection for refusing to speak in the US is the Fifth Amendment, which of course predates most modern police tactics. But there are basically no calls to change that, and it has a lot of cultural support too - there's plenty of media where "I ain't sayin' nothin'" marks a tough or well-informed character instead of a guilty one.

The other side of which is that US police have very few boundaries in interrogations other than giving a Miranda warning and avoid physical violence. A lot of police forces rely heavily on the Reid Technique, which presumes the suspect is guilty and has a long history of producing false confessions. They're also free to outright lie about both the state of evidence and how a confession will be handled.

I don't know a great deal about Norwegian policing, but just hearing this I would predict that "brought in for questioning" doesn't have the same "try to drag a confession out of you" associations it does in the US.

Refusing to provide an alibi is going to cause you problems in the US as well, but generally in the US defendants talk through their lawyers, not directly.

In Germany - and I assume in the States as well - being a witness will place much more legal duties on you than being a suspect. A witness for example can be obligated to give testimony. Which is why police sometimes intentionally declares a suspect a witness.

In the US you have the 5th amendment which means you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself witnesses that may incriminate themselves would get an immunity deal before taking the stand the only time where you cannot invoke the 5th is during cross when you agreed to testify.

Under certain cases in which your testimony cannot be used against you the court can compel you to testify if you refuse then you can be charged with contempt a common case for this would be a court ordering a reporter to disclose their source.

But the prosecution classifying a defendant as a witness would not fly.