That's what expert witnesses reported, not some thought the judge just came up with. I recommend reading the actual ruling if you want to understand how the judge came to this conclusion.

I find this to be an odd statement as well (as someone who did not know Assange had autism until I read that sentence)

Although I think the ruling is reasonable if the justification is simply that US prisons are inhumane

Vaguely related: I heard about a thought experiment from Amanda Askell (in one of her podcast interviews), but it's kind of interesting: what would you give up in order to not go to jail for 5 years. What amount of money would you pay? Would you be willing to lose a finger instead?

This does not immediately imply that we should abolish jails, but at the very least we should consider just how serious the punishment is. (And then repeat the experiment for a federal prison Assange would be in)

It's not speculative, it's literally what he and his lawyers said. The judge was persuaded on the balance of probability (more likely than not) that it was true.

"It's not speculative, it's literally what he and his lawyers said. "

Then it's the most absolutely biased possible thing upon which to rule.

Assange's isolation was a) self imposed and b) considerably better than any 'prison' than he would face in Sweden, the UK or the USA. You don't get to 'not go to jail' because 'it will be depressing'.

Do you understand what happens in a court case?

One side puts forward an argument, and the other side puts forward their argument, and a judge decides which is true and then applies the law.

Here the judge decided that he was at risk of death if he went to a US prison, the US was unable to answer that point, and the judge then looks at law - ECHR article 2 - to decide whether to send him or not.

The judge seems pretty clear that Assange should be in jail. Just not in an inhumane US jail.

Your comment BTW is a great example of how toxic these convos can be. I loathe Assange and I don't care if he rots in prison. You've assumed that I think he should be walking free.

>You don't get to 'not go to jail' because 'it will be depressing'.

To add to DanBC, a country absolutely can decide not to extradite to another country they believe plans to imprison someone at well below what they consider to be the minimum standard for human rights, the same way many countries do not extradite to a country that tortures or has the death penalty. There is a difference between making the argument “I don’t want to go to jail because it is depressing” and “the country’s planned imprisonment would violate my basic human rights and is to such an inhumane level as it would likely cause severe physiological damage”.

>We're supposed to be 'advanced countries' why can't we get simple things right?

for the same reason old projects tend to suffer from old unfixed bugs and a burden of backwards compatibility