[vidarh]

He's spent more time struggling to avoid jail time than he would spend in jail in Sweden if convicted, in a relatively low security prison likely to have quite decent accommodation and amenities. This isn't like the US where he'd risk years in some horrible shithole.

I'd be surprised if he got more than 6 months if convincted - there's been people convicted for violent rapes in substantially worse circumstances that have gotten less than two years.

Maybe his ego won't allow him to face a possible conviction or something, or maybe he genuinely is afraid - whether justified or not - of being handed over to the US.

But it just doesn't make sense to go to this level of effort "just" to avoid a Swedish prison sentence given the relatively low level of the alleged crimes.

(EDIT: quiet => quite)

[archangel_one]

Obviously, he is not doing it just to avoid a Swedish prison sentence. He appears to think that if he goes to Sweden, he'll end up going to the US too and once there he'll be "vanished" or worse. I'd say that's not unreasonable given what we've heard from the US already, and the pressure they've been willing to bring to bear on Kim Dotcom (who they're a lot less personally annoyed with than Assange) or the Pirate Bay a few years back.

[vidarh]

Exactly. So I think it is unfair to assume he isn't prepared to stand in front of a Swedish court. It doesn't even really matter whether this threat is real or not. What matters is that he appears to believe it, and that there are enough oddities to exacerbate his fears and raise questions for other people too.

So that leaves Sweden with two options: Trying to work around that and coming to a compromise that allows them to try him, or face a standoff that could very well last for years.

So far they seem to have gone to a curious amount of effort to avoid trying to make any accommodations at all to move the case forward. Maybe they are just being totally obtuse and irrational. Or maybe there really is more going behind the scenes.

I would like to see him stand trial. If he's guilty, he should serve the sentence. If he's not, we need explanations for why this case has been treated this way.

One would think that the Swedish prosecutors office would like to see him stand trial too, yet they seem to do everything they can to ensure it drags out.