[jacquesm]

Very clever to arrest him after the elections. Before the elections this would have been a much bigger issue and possibly would have gained votes for the Swedish Pirate Party resulting in more seats in the European Parliament for them.

[zxcdw]

As a small detail, Peter Sunde ran for the European Parlament with the Finnish Pirate Party.

[kryptiskt]

Why would the police give two shits about the EU election? I don't know what corrupt hellhole you are from, but Sweden doesn't work like that.

Not that it would have been an issue. The Pirate Bay trial is old news and it's hardly a major scandal that a convicted man has to serve his time. As it is, the Pirate Party was wiped out and were far from getting a seat.

[baddox]

> Why would the police give two shits about the EU election?

Because police are part of the government, and the government of Sweden has obvious reasons to care about EU elections.

[elinchrome]

Ideally police should just enforce the laws on the books and have no government influence of their actions, aside from the changing of laws.

[Excavator]

No worries! It's not the government that is the major influencer; for example, in 2006, you had Henrik Pontén¹ of the Svenska Antipiratbyrån physically leading the raid against The Pirate Bay host and Jim Keyzer², the lead investigator for the case, was employed by Warner Brothers during the investigation.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Pont%C3%A9n

2: https://torrentfreak.com/warner-confesses-pirate-bay-cop-com...

[fidelar]

Around the same time the US started passing file sharing laws and the monitoring laws allowing the police extended measures when the crime had something to do with national security, Sweden started passing almost identical file sharing laws, and around the same time the FRA law passed. The previous decade or so has seen several judical measures that have been heavily influenced by politics. (From sweden myself)

[kryptiskt]

Which says nothing about direct political management of the police.

The thing people really misunderstand here is how explosive this would be in the election. It wouldn't have moved the needle at all, it's just news not an event, no hypothetical master manipulator would bother with this stuff.

[sampo]

The 2008–2009 Pirate Bay Trial demonstrated a level of corruption not normally believed to be possible in Sweden:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_Trial#Bias_alleg...

[kryptiskt]

As an illustration of how big news this is rated as in Sweden, try to find the news on Aftonbladets front page: http://www.aftonbladet.se/

[Excavator]

All I know is that, for some reason, I'm feeling rather shocked after visiting that mess of a site.