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Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

It's a little difficult to reconcile the idea of fanatical Swedes doing everything within their power to get Assange into the US with the back-and-forth over whether to prosecute him and their failure to prevent him leaving the country after they'd decided to reopen the case.

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Consider that it is perfectly possible for some Swedes to be "fanatical" and for some (or even most) to want to abide by the law. The question is whether there are some Swedes with sufficient reach willing to go far enough.

E.g. some years back, Swedish police black bagged two political asylum seekers from Egypt and illegally handed them over to the CIA, knowing the CIA would fly them to Egypt and hand them over to Mubarak. Sweden asked for a "promise" they'd not be tortured, which they promptly were of course. The entire operation violated by Swedish law and international law, was condemned by the UN and Sweden has been ordered to pay restitution over it.

Yet a few years later, Swedish military police uncovered that the CIA were still conducting illegal rendition flights via Sweden, with the cooperation of Swedish ground staff. We know about the latter only because Wikileaks years later reported on how the US ambassador to Sweden was called in to the Swedish foreign ministry over the matter. We don't know whether there have been further "issues" because it has never been investigated thoroughly by anyone that we know of, and certainly not publicly.

Clearly some Swedes - including police officers - were ok with blatantly ignoring Swedish law in the first matter, and some were willing to continue cooperating with the CIA illegally even after the massive uproar of the first revelations, and after it was clear political authorities at least in public opposed it, and at the same time as other parts of the Swedish government were prepared to take action against it.

I'm not saying that the Swedes are fanatical at all. Just that the idea that they CAN'T extradite (or let the US render) him to the US is delusional. A country can do whatever someone won't go to war over. That's the ultimate determining factor, "will someone invade/bomb/whatever us for this?" and if the answer is no, the country is free to do so!

Remember that there was little/no international support for the US starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the US did so anyhow and since nobody has invaded the US for doing so, it seems that the US has "gotten away with it" at least so far as international law is concerned.

Finally it doesn't have to be that the Swedes desperately want Assange to be extradited, but merely that someone from the US is pressuring them to keep reminding the world that "Assange isn't a good guy" from time to time.

I'm not saying Assange is innocent, either. I honestly don't know. But to think that the US has an interest in hindering him, well, that's not unreasonable at all.

Exactly. If they're willing to do this, why would an embassy provide protection ? As several recent incidents illustrated, it is in fact quite possible for armed men to walk into an embassy and do whatever the hell they want inside.

Would Ecuador go to war over such an act ? No way.

Sweden does not do kidnapping on foreign soil so it is way more likely that someone abuses the Swedish bureaucracy to illegally extradite someone. Sweden has done it before under the flag of the war on terror. Now I have no idea if this may happen to Assange but the his fear is not entirely unfounded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_and...

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