Honestly, if anyone thought he would go....

[kierthos]

Julian Assange has 'declined' the invitation of the local constabulary to leave the relative safety of the Ecuador embassy. Considering that if he did accept the invitation, he'd be arrested for violating the terms of his bail, fairly promptly shipped off to Sweden to answer the charges against him there. Said charges (rape and assault accusations) are, according to Assange, merely meant to result in his capture by Swedish authorities so he can be extradited to the U.S. so he can talk to some rather humorless people about that whole Wikileaks thing.

Now, I don't know if Assange did what he's accused of in Sweden. I also don't know if the Swedes would promptly drop the matter if and when Assange got back to Sweden so they could then hand him over to the U.S.

I do know that he's got every reason to be concerned about the latter. The U.S. is fairly well known for it's humorless dickheads roaming the halls of power.

Comments

[matgb]

So why did he run from a country with incredibly strong safeguards against extradition, to a country whose approach to extradition requests from the US is to ask if there's anything else they can do?

He'd be safer there than in the UK. He's running from a potential rape charge and his lawyer as good as admitted he did it, all they originally wanted him to do was answer some questions.