As a bonus, under EU law, once Assange was extradited from Sweden to the UK, he couldn't then be re-extradited to the US without the permission of both Sweden a

As a bonus, under EU law, once Assange was extradited from Sweden to the UK, he couldn't then be re-extradited to the US without the permission of both Sweden and the UK (as per Article 28 of the 2002 EU Council Framework Decision (2002/584/JHA). So the options are: 1. The UK will not assent to to Assange's extradition to the US, so extraditing him to Sweden will protect him from extradition. 2. The UK will assent to Assange's extradition, but for mysterious reasons, they didn't just hand him over, when he was in their custody. Despite their status as a close ally of the US, and their long standing history of handing over anyone the US asks for, no questions asked (Gary McKinnon, Richard O'Dwyer, the NatWest Three, and many more). Plus, neither the UK nor Sweden can legally extradite him to the US without a binding assurance that the death penalty will not be sought, so...yeah. The more you think about it, the less sense extradition makes as an explanation for the Swedish problems. If extradition was going to happen, it would have happened when Assange was in British custody (and it didn't) or it would happen after Assange left the EU and was in a more pliant jurisdiction (ie, not Sweden).