He was never free to go; that's a myth spread by his attorney, who received an official condemnation by the Swedish Bar Association for lying about that in court as well as a major dressing down from the judge (he's lucky he didn't get hit with legal sanctions). There was never a time period where he was not under investigation, and when he fled the country, his attorney was actively pretending that Assange was getting ready to come in willingly (and then after he got to the UK, Hurtg continued stalling, pretending Assange was going to be coming immediately back). If you want to see all the nitty-gritty, you can read the Ny SMS logs, they've been released.

To go into more details about the early stages: AA and SW walked into a Stockholm police station and made the report, and were interviewed by two separate officers. As it was a weekend, the only available prosecutor, Eva Finne, took the case. There were a total of three initial investigating officers - Wassgren, Krans, and Gehlen. Wassgren and Gehlen felt, from the interviews, that Assange should be charged with five counts (2x molestatation, 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x rape); Krans felt it should be 2x, 1x, 2x. News quickly broke that Assange was being investigated. This is supposed to be illegal, the name isn't supposed to be disclosed at this stage but Sweden has some crazy-strong whistleblower protection laws (part of the reason Assange was moving there in the first place), you can't even investigate to find out who made a leak, so it always happens when cases involve famous people. Finne quickly had a warrant issued for Assange's arrest for the two rapes - even though he had not at that point refused to cooperate. There was naturally a huge backlash, and Finne withdrew the warrant (thus dropping the rape charges), but kept the investigation open for the molestation and unlawful sexual coersion charges. It was during this time that Assange was interviewed; since the only investigations open referred to the lesser charges, that's all he was interviewed about. Meanwhile, the legal representative of the women, Claes Borgström, appealed the decision (Sweden has a police appeal board, which is frequently used for cases like this and isn't particularly unusual); the fact that Finne had dropped the rape charge concerning SW before SW's statement had even gotten into the computer system made it pretty obvious that the case hadn't gotten a fair hearing, and the board ruled in favor of the women. The case was thus transferred to the next prosecutor up, Marianne Ny. Ny reopened the investigation for all five counts, and tried to get Assange back in to interview him for the dropped charges. The team meanwhile did lots of followup interviews and forensics collection and testing. It was during this time that Assange fled to the UK. Ny spent over a month trying to get Assange to come back, continually reaching out to his attorney, even the day before she went into court to get a warrant for him. A judge approved the Swedish warrant (thus he was formally anklagad, the Swedish stage for trying to get a person into custody so that they can then be åtalad, which is the stage that leads to trial) and subsequently the EAW was issued. The original warrant was open for the full five counts. Assange appealed to the Svea Board of Appeals (Sweden has a strong defendents rights process, even though he was hiding from the law he was still able in absentia to appeal the investigation), and a full court hearing was held involving a full review of the evidence and testimony from Assange's attorneys. For the most part, he lost - one of the rape charges was dropped, but the other and all of the others were upheld, leaving a formal finding of probable cause of rape, molestation, and unlawful sexual coersion. Assange appealed to the Swedish Supreme Court. His appeal was rejected. He then moved through the appeals process in the British system, first the lower court, the high court, and the Supreme Court, alleging malicious prosecution, an unlawfully issued warrant, and a number of other things. He lost at each stage on every count he argued. He claimed to be preparing a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court on different grounds - instead, he fled to the embassy.

The current status is that he has an EAW out for him, four charges, checkbox on #4 ticked for rape, all charges upheld as being applicable and equivalent to their equivalent crimes in the UK, with the warrant issued legally and properly. He has been found in violation of his bail terms as well.

Ah, the old anklagad / åtalad word game... (Assange is anklagad but not åtalad, but you can't be åtalad until you're in custody, so he's using the fact that he's not åtalad to argue for not having to ever enter into a situation where he can be åtalad; being anklagad is ued to get a person into custody, while being åtalad is used to try them)

Perhaps some day, your descriptions of the case and Swedish law will come within a ballistic missile's range of the actuality. Until then, I won't be holding my breath.

Straw men usually are.

Their description of Swedish rape law is to reality as fish are to bicycles. Sweden actually has some of the most lax, backward rape laws in Europe. For example, several years back there was a case where a teenage girl was gang raped by three men, but only the first could be charged because she had given up struggling after the being beaten into submission by the first and hadn't registered an objection to the other two.

What Assange is *actually* charged with, the rape charge (#4 on the EAW) is:

4. On 17th August 2010, in the home of the injured party [name given] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party’s sexual integrity.

To put it quite plainly, he's charged with, when a girl who was paranoid about disease and pregnancy refused to have unprotected sex with him, he waited until she fell asleep and then started F*ing her unprotected. Which is F*ing rape, and the fact that people keep trying to pretend that it's not "real" rape, I find sickening.

The Swedes certainly are, or they would have issued a warrant for his arrest rather than for questioning.

When will this myth die? From the official sworn statement of the Swedish prosecutor submitted to the British courts:

10. Once the interrogation is complete it may be that further questions need to be put to witnesses or the forensic scientists. 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.

There is an EAW out for him. It lays out four charges: 1x unlawful sexual coersion, 2x molestation, and 1x rape. The checkbox for rape is marked next to he rape charge (#4). Every level of the British court system has reviewed the warrant and reached the same conclusions: Everything he is charged with in Sweden would be their equivalent crimes in the UK (including rape), the warrant is legitimate, and he is wanted for the purposes of prosecution, not merely questioning.

Yeah, but the guards handing him over are all beautiful naked blond women, right?

Assange Consented To Be Extradited, Says British Home Secretary

Wrong. Sweden *additionally* has restrictions in their extradition law banning extradition for intelligence and military crimes, beyond the general EU restrictions. Which is why they refused to hand over Edward Lee Howard (the most major CIA defector to the USSR) after only a very brief preliminary investigation; it's simply banned to extradite for such crimes. Think the US didn't really want Howard? Not to mention that the UK *also* has veto over any extradition, as the sending state under a EU surrender request , so he'd be *safer* in Sweden (it's an extra barrier). And here we're talking about the UK, the country that wouldn't even hand over Gary McKinnon, the most damaging hacker of US military systems on record, because "he has aspergers" (as if Julian I-Have-To-Wear-Specific-Jackets-To-Write-Specific-Documents Assange doesn't?). Think the US didn't really want McKinnon? And of course, the ECHR has veto power over every step of the way - the ECHR which is often considered the greatest refuge for people fleeing extradition on Earth, the same court body that goes so far in terms of protecting the rights of suspects and prisoners that it ruled that you can't ban UK prisoners who are in prison from voting or sex offenders serving time for their offenses from having access to (government paid) reproductive services.

And what praytell was the plan here? Instead of waiting until Julian, famous for being a globetrotter, goes to a trivially easy nation, let's insist on getting him in the nation that *he himself* chose as the most difficult? And then let's not have a single person even watch him to warn the Swedes when he leaves or warn the British when he jumps bail? And let's complicate the whole thing with competing local charges?

The conspiracy theory is so far into fantasyland that parents in Narnia could use it as a bedtime story for their kids. And Assange knows this. Whenever it's pointed out, he always changes the subject. He lost one of his biggest supporters this way, Jemima Khan, who posted a huge chunk of his bail, but now considers him a "new L. Ron Hubbard" because of his dodges on this issue.

Oh come on now. Sweden should change their laws and override the separation of powers clause in their constitition because it's ASSANGE we're talking about. I mean, don't they know that he's just the AWESOMEST AWESOME that ever AWESOMED and everything revolves around him?

Yes, Assange was so terrified of those evil Swedes, those American puppets, that he was moving Wikileaks' base of operations there (after alienating the majority of his Iceland team) and applying for a residence permit there, right? That's why he called Sweden's laws and legal system his "shield" in multiple interviews, right? That's why Wikileaks leaked that in 2006 Sweden caused a major diplomatic rift with the US by outright disguising their special forces as airport workers to break into a CIA rendition flight to stop the US, right?

Funny how Sweden only became evil US lackeys after he was anklagad for rape.

Link

He phoned ahead to the police station to tell them he was coming. There were two phones on his lap but he answered neither one himself. A French journalist was following the car but lost us. At the police station, Sarah stopped and said: ‘Shall I do the honours?’ I watched as she went out and searched the bushes.

‘Is she checking for paparazzi?’ I asked.

‘I wish,’ said Julian.

‘What then?’

‘Assassins.’

There was this incredible need for spy-talk. Julian would often refer to the places where he lived as ‘safe houses’ and say things like, ‘When you go to Queensland there’s a contact there you should speak to.’

‘You mean a friend?’ I’d say.

‘No. It’s more complicated than that.’ He appeared to like the notion that he was being pursued and the tendency was only complicated by the fact that there were real pursuers. But the pursuit was never as grave as he wanted it to be. He stuck to his Cold War tropes, where one didn’t deliver a package, but made a ‘drop off’. One day, we were due to meet some of the WikiLeaks staff at a farmhouse out towards Lowestoft. We went in my car. Julian was especially edgy that afternoon, feeling perhaps that the walls were closing in, as we bumped down one of those flat roads covered in muck left by tractors’ tyres. ‘Quick, quick,’ he said, ‘go left. We’re being followed!’ I looked in the rear-view mirror and could see a white Mondeo with a wire sticking out the back.

‘Don’t be daft, Julian,’ I said. ‘That’s a taxi.’

‘No. Listen to me. It’s surveillance. We’re being followed. Quickly go left.’ Just by comical chance, as I was rocking a Sweeney-style handbrake turn, the car behind us suddenly stopped at a farmhouse gate and a little boy jumped out and ran up the path. I looked at the clock as we rolled off in a cloud of dust. It said 3.48.

‘That was a kid being delivered home from school,’ I said. ‘You’re mental.’

People turned up out of nowhere. No one introduced them properly, and they didn’t have titles anyway: they were just Carlos or Tina or Oliver or Thomas. One night in Ellingham Hall, a French guy called Jeremy came in with a sack of encrypted phones. Julian always seemed to have three phones on the go at any one time – the red phone was his personal one – and this latest batch was designed to deal with a general paranoia that newspapers were hacking all of us. It was always like that: sudden bursts of vigilance would vie with complete negligence. There was no real system of security or applied secrecy, not if you’ve read about how spy agencies operate. Julian would speak on open lines when he simply forgot to take care. The others kept the same mobiles for months. And none of them seemed to care about a running tape recorder. Granted, I was there to ask questions and record replies, but still, much of what they said had nothing to do with the book and they simply forgot about it. Only once was I asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, when Julian gave me a hard-drive containing very sensitive material, but they forgot I had the drive and never asked for it back.

The guy was living like a character in a spy novel long before he started Wikileaks; he's a total paranoid regardless of what threats are actually present. The last person you want running an organization that might draw negative attention from powerful entities is a guy who grew up (for a period, at least) in a white supremicist cult and then was pursued by them for years after he and his mother fled.

He actually once showed up at a speech badly burned and trying to cover it up because he had installed a UV lamp but went way overboard on using it.

It is a totally BS excuse. The real issue is the timing. The Swedish Court system just smacked down his most recent appeal, eliminating any hope that they're going to be dropping the case any time soon. I think he's finally starting to come to the realization that running from the accusations and trying to negotiate or blackmail them away just isn't how the world works. He's got a probable cause of rape finding from the Svea Court of Appeals, upheld by the Swedish Supreme Court, and with the warrants upheld at every level of the British court system up to and including the Supreme Court. You can't "maneuver" your way out of that. Real life isn't a spy novel.

Honestly, I thought this realization would come after his run for the Australian Senate, under the theory that the UK wouln't dare stop an Australian senator (his campaign fell apart when he overrode the democratic vote of his party in order to break their alliance with the Greens and instead caucus with the Neo-Nazi "Australia First" party and other right-wing parties, leading to mass desertions). But... better late than never. If he does, actually, come out, that is.

Yeah, but because it's so weird, all of the tourists who want to be seen as tough have to try it for themselves. ;) I wouldn't be surprised if 75% of hákarl sales are to tourists.

You have to admit, "poisonous urine-scented shark rotted in a pit until it has the texture of cheese, reeks of ammonia and will no longer kill you" isn't the most appetizing food description ;)

Part of the problem is that most restaurants and stores would rather serve farm-raise game animals than wild-killed game. So if you manage to develop a taste for a particular type of meat, people will often start farm raising them.

I let Google Autocomplete it for me to try to figure out. Most were mundane, like "Take the money and run", but I have to say, I was pretty boggled by Google's suggestion of "Take the skinheads bowling". ;)

The best solution is actually monorails.

Were you sent here by the devil???