False. Among countless sources you can read which demonstrate the falsity of the "free to leave" claim, you can read the SMS logs between Assange's lawyer and the prosecutor, or the British Lower Court ruling. While Assange was leaving the country, his lawyer (Björn Hurtig) was pretending that Assange had no plans to leave and was setting up an interview between Assange and the prosecutors' office in Sweden. Later he tried to mislead the British lower court into thinking that he didn't know that the prosecutor's office still wanted Assange. The judge caught him in the lie, chewed him out (he's lucky he didn't get hit with sanctions), and received an official condemnation by the Swedish Bar Association.
Assange did face one round of preliminary questioning, and only concerning the girl that there are no rape charges concerning (AA). He has never been questioned about the girl that the rape charge is about (SW). That's what the interview that he was supposed to stand for when he fled Sweden was to be about.
There is no "different crime unit". The initial prosecutor, Eva Finne, was put on the case because the report was made during a weekend and she was the only one available. She initially opened an investigation into two counts of rape and various lesser charges - one count of rape against each woman. News of the investigation quickly leaked (as almost always happens in Sweden due to their whistleblower protection laws), which put the prosecutor in an awkward spot, as the name of a suspect isn't supposed to be released until they're charged. She quickly got a warrant issued against Assange - despite the fact that he had never refused to cooperate. This in turn led to a major backlash. She shortly thereafter she withdrew the rape charges to cancel the warrant, but left the investigation open into the lesser sexual assault charges. This in turn led to a protest being filed by Claes Borgström, the legal representative of the accusers, as SW's victim statement hadn't even gotten into the computer at the time, so there's no way the case could have been fairly reviewed. Sweden has an appeals board process at this stage, which is fairly commonly utilized in the Swedish judicial system. The board ruled in favor of the women, and the case was re-opened, which put the next senior prosecutor, Marianne Ny, on the case. Ny reopened the case for all five counts (it was later reduced to four on appeal; these four are what ended up in the EAW which stands to this day)
A bit about the nomenclature. I use the word "charges", but of course, that's an English term, the Swedish judicial system is structured differently. First you "anklaga" someone, then you "åtala" them. The first stage means you have to have a formal list of things they're approved of, you can get a warrant, the accused can appeal and get a court hearing (all of this happened, Assange lost with a finding of probable cause of rape, and had his loss sustained on appeal). The second stage (being åtalad) starts the process of the trial. The subject has to have everything they're being åtalad over put before them in questioning before the decision to åtala is taken, and then the trial must begin within a short, fixed time period. Hence, you anklaga someone to get them into custody, then you åtala them to try them. Assange has been anklagad but not åtalad. For the purpose of the EAW, being anklagad was ruled as being equivalent of being charged by every level of the UK judicial system, but Assange and a lot of his backers make much ado about him not being "charged", only translating åtalad as charged. Either way, what matters is Assange is charged to the maximum extent possible under the Swedish judicial system at this stage, as he has not surrendered to Swedish custody and thus cannot be åtalad.
I should probably include the sworn statement of the prosecutor (Ny) concerning the questioning: "Subject to any matters said by him, which undermine my present view that he should be indicted, an indictment will be launched with the court thereafter. It can therefore be seen that Assange is sought for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings and that he is not sought merely to assist with our enquiries."
And this is Sweden we are talking about, a country with documented cases of cooperaing with the CIA on renditions.
Ah, this old canard. First off, name *one* country that doesn't have any bad marks in their Judicial history. Go on, do it. You're referring to a case that's over a decade old, and was one of the biggest scandals in Swedish judicial history, the case of Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery. The Swedish foreign office was presented with evidence from Egypt (which turned out to be falsified) that the two, who stated that they were asylum seekers, were actually convicted terrorists. They also received a promise from Egypt that they would not be mistreated in custody, and ruled to have them extradited. The US agreed to transport them, and they were handed over to US and Egyptian. The US then used their (typically brutal) means to transfer the men to Egypt, wherein Egypt broke their promise and repeatedly abused them in custody. The case was made even worse by how quickly the two were deported, not leaving appropriate time for appeal before they were out of country.
What was the outcome? First off, it created a major national scandal in Sweden. The two men were repatriated to Sweden, given permanent residence, and paid a large compensation. The case led to a change in EU extradition law, which made it no longer possible to extradite based simply on promises of no mistreatment - the country has to have a track record of upholding their promises. It also led to an EU-wide (but especially in Sweden) backlash against the US extradition program. This built over the years and came to a head in 2006, where Sweden created a major diplomatic incident with the US by diguising their special forces as airport workers and hijacking a US rendition flight to stop the US from renditioning people through their airspace. And how do we know about that event? Why, Wikileaks, of course!
The reality is, while you can find incidents from any country in the world, Sweden has one of the world's best judicial systems. As I pointed out below:
The peer-reviewed World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranks Sweden #1 in the world for fundamental rights of the accused. Assange on at least two occasions called Sweden his "shield" before the incident due to their having such good whistleblower protections**, and was applying for residence there. It was only after he got anklagad for rape that he suddenly changed his tune and decided that Sweden is an evil US lackey bent on his downfall. Funny how that works.
Do you honestly think Assange didn't know about the Agiza and al-Zery case when he decided to move there and declared Sweden his "shield" and talked about how they have the best whistleblower protections and anti-extradition laws in the world?