Sweden's Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Ny and Chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, in a press conference in Stockholm last week, were keen to qualify their reasons why their investigation into Julian Assange's case for suspected rape had been dropped.
It did not matter, they stressed, whether he was innocent or guilty: what mattered were the interminable logistics that had dogged their failure to get him to Sweden for almost seven years.
Despite persistent communications by WikiLeaks legal representatives to the prosecutors that they were willing to accede to video interviews, or on site discussions in the Ecuadorean embassy where Assange was granted asylum, it took till November 2016 for any movement to take place.
Ny's text, relayed to the Stockholm District Court, asserted that it was 'no longer possible to continue the preliminary investigation pursuant to Chapter 23, Section 4, second paragraph, of the Code of Judicial Procedure.' Keeping in mind 'the facts and circumstances of the case, executing the decision to extradite him to Sweden is not expected to be possible in the foreseeable future'.
All in all, it had been a poorly conducted investigation, replete with stops and starts, and with suspicions of US pressure. Within Sweden itself, the legal fraternity were divided. The Swedish Supreme Court had also insisted that speed was of the essence: commence proceedings, or drop the investigation.
Claims that US authorities have shown no interest in Assange's case seemed rocky, with a revelation by Isgren and Ny about an FBI inquiry on the investigation. Both claimed the inquiry, received in March, was so vague as to require a simple answer: a referral to the office's website. In cavalier fashion, the inquiring email was deleted.
Professor Mads Andenæs, chair of the UN Working Group on arbitrary detention, felt that the rule of law had been vindicated. 'The warrant,' he asserted, 'was contestable. There were dissents in both the UK and Swedish supreme courts.' Andenæs also noted that the UK Supreme Court had trouble with 'several aspects of the extradition request'.
The UN Working Group on arbitrary detention found for Assange in February last year, claiming that his 'stay at the Embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in London to this date should be considered as a prolongation of the already continued deprivation of liberty'.
"To Assange, information, seen analogously to weaponry, is for the public, to consume and use. Government, to be accountable, needs to be opened. Little wonder that he regards the