Hmm? This just goes to show that the USA didn't need to manufacture rape allegations in Sweden just in order to get Assange extradited, since their best chance of doing so was to extradite him from the UK.
I am not saying it was the case or that the argument has merits. I am saying that the argument I've heard concerning this incident is not being fairly represented by the claim that the USA needed to manufacture crimes allegations in Sweden.
Not saying that the Swedish charges were all manufactured, just following your hypothesis.
How does having Assange accused of rape in Sweden help the US to extradite him?
Assange was traveling between lots of countries at the time. It's not as if he was permanently based in Sweden. And Assange being accused of a crime in Sweden does not in any way make it easier for the US to extradite him from Sweden on other charges.
edit: Also, the usual conspiracy story was that the CIA/the Illuminati/whoever had directed Sweden to reopen the rape case after Assange had arrived in the UK. (The case was dropped before he left Sweden, then reopened shortly after he arrived in the UK.)
PS: the "timeline issue"... asked and answered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633178
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/11/julian-assange...
Note that Assange was in the UK, in full reach of the authorities, for over a year before he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. The story you're cooking up simply makes no sense in that context.
Simple, character assassination is a very effective tool to silence public outrage.
There are far simpler ways of assassinating someone's character than manufacturing rape allegations in a foreign country.
[Fake] "Wikileaks computer IPs associated with child porn ring: was Assange using Wikileaks as cover for child porn, CIA revealed they found evidence of several Wikileaks computers uploading to child porn sites"
That would probably be enough.
Even if not true it is rational to consider in the same way asking "Why would a mob boss choose to have an enemy killed?" is kind of a dumb question - the question is why not at this point.
Granted it is important to keep the speculations well ordered as there are crucial differences between levels like "proven to have done it", "proven to have done somthing like this before", and "are responsible for everything bad in the world".
Venezuela is a good example for a baseline. The regieme has proven themselves complete incompetents that have had to replace sections of civilian industry with untrained military and the CIA has toppled many South American governments. Thus while it is technically possible the CIA sabotage created a power outage maladministration is a more likely culprit especially since blaming foreign powers for internal problems to hold power is a time "honored" tradition.
For a counterfactual if the outage was followed by an invasion it would be hard to believe the CIA didn't cause if their plan was just "wait until it collapses for a peacekeeping causus beli".
Actually, I don't think there are. Rape is met with near universal disapproval, and unless the accused can prove where they are at every single moment of their life, it is difficult for them disprove the claims.
This is months after some of the biggest wikileaks releases including "collateral murder" and heading into the release of the Iraq War Logs and State Department Cables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_material_published_by_...
Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation. He ended up going into the Ecuadorian Embassy soon after the release of "Global Intelligence Files" because the USA and private intelligence agencies were after him.
None of this has anything to do with the rape charges though. He is being sent to the USA over the 2010 Manning releases because he was communicating with Manning while she was stealing the docs. If she wasn't such an attention whore, she wouldn't have even been arrested. She bragged about it on IRC...
One woman claims he intentionally tore a condom. That was a lesser charge whose statute of limitations expired a while ago.
The other claims that, after insisting reportedly they use a condom, he waited for her to fall asleep and then started having unprotected see with her -- something he knew she would not consent to. That's the rape charge.
> Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation.
The alleged rape victim was initially overwhelmed (not uncommon for a rape victim) and didn't want to press charges. A few days (not months) later, she hired an attorney to represent her who got the case reopened.
Almost all the information the public knows about the case has come directly from Assange (and thus supports his conspiracy theory explanation), since the Swedish protecting authority doesn't comment on pending cases.
It is possible for Assange to be a bad guy and also for the U.S. going after him after all this time to also be unjust and bad. Not everything is a conspiracy and you don't necessarily have any "good" people when you start messing with international espionage and related areas.
Edit: HN doesn't let me reply so deep in a thread unless I wait like 20 minutes. It'd have been simpler if he were detained as they'd have had a guarantee of his jurisdiction and plan accordingly. I imagine having him arrested in a country that had allowed CIA extraordinary rendition would've been better for them than having him protected in Ecuadorian embassy.
[1]: https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/wikileaks-founder-julian... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/16/julian-assange...