[happosai]

Assanges version is "The rape charges are fake smokescreen used to extradite me to USA via sweden". Now this fails the Occam'ss razor. If USA cared they would extradite Assange directly from UK, Swedish detour adds nothing of value. Only makes things much more complicated. The relationship between UK and USA spooks have much warmer relation than USA and Sweden, and Sweden would still needs UK's permission to to extradite to USA. Wikileaks is now become all about Assanges inflated ego, where he believes world revolves around him and Hillary is personally targeting drones against him. Meanwhile in real world, if Assange weren't, someone else would be publicizing leaks.

The great irony of it all is that Max penalty Assange faces is 6 years in comfy swedish prison. He chooses instead to lock himself in an embassy for 4 years so far...

[EdHominem]

You need an actual crime to extradite someone. That's why the rape case is so important.

That's the difference between "rendition" (kidnapping) and legal extradition.

There's no plausible crime to use for a UK extradition because Assange didn't hack into the systems himself, and isn't bound by our laws on the release of classified information.