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Politics? It's reasonable that the UK Government may not agree if the appearance is bad and would cause political backlash. It's also possible that they're har

by codys 9y ago

Politics? It's reasonable that the UK Government may not agree if the appearance is bad and would cause political backlash. It's also possible that they're harder to lean on than as smaller, weaker, lower GDP government. I mean, it could be as simple as "they won't agree, but other guys might". Maybe someone in US Gov has a better relationship with the person/people in Sweden that would need to approve things. Maybe someone owes someone else a favor. All of these are reasonable possibilities. Governments aren't 1 dimensional.

Lazare 9y ago
The "extradite to a laxer jurisdiction so you can re-extradite to the real destination" idea is fun, but the legal system doesn't allow it. Under EU law, if Assange was extradited from the UK to Sweden, then both the UK and Sweden would have to approve of him being re-extradited to the UK. So either the UK will approve of Assange being extradited (and extraditing to Sweden isn't needed) or they won't (and extraditing to Sweden won't help).