It was mishandled from day one when the prosecutors office acknowledged that Assange was under investigation, this on it's own was - while not strictly illegal

It was mishandled from day one when the prosecutors office acknowledged that Assange was under investigation, this on it's own was - while not strictly illegal - something essentially unheard of in Sweden, especially for a case involving a possible rape charge. It was highly irregular, and considering how much of police and prosecutor actions in Sweden are based on professional ethics, rather then laws themselves, the level of irregular behavior clearly stands out in this case, as it also did in the pirate bay case, but that's a story for another time. Yes, we really should put more of the rules for police and prosecution into law, there's too much leeway as it is today. Back to the topic at hand. Rape cases are usually not public, they almost alwaya are played out without anyone except legal teams, judge, prosecutor, lay judges present. Thus since the trial is in private, and an exoneration in court is then less 'visible' than the public "accusation" cause by naming the suspect, the view is generally that the courts and prosecution should not explicitly name people in the kind of cases you expect to be held in that setting, or in generall - cases where publicly naming suspects can cause undue harm to the suspected regardless of the veracity of the accusations. It was as far as I can recall still unusual for any accused to be publicly named, much less so for cases expected to be tried behind locked doors. Usually public naming of suspects only happened if the suspect was deemed to be violent enough that the public needed to be warned.