I am by no means clear that the "rape charge" was dropped. Apart from anything else, there are no charges. Read my lips. There are no charges. There are merely allegations to be investigated. The difference is fundamental under Swedish law. I thought all allegations had been picked up and were being pursued by the second investigator.

Additionally, being in the same bed with someone, even naked in the same bed with someone, is not, legally speaking, consent to sex (at least in England) - and for absolutely sure, being asleep is not an effective consent to sex. So, (unless, possibly, the woman in question had said "I'm going to sleep now, you can fuck me in the night if you want to but don't wake me up" (or something similar) there is no vestige of an argument that that was not rape (if the sex happened and the woman was asleep).

I do not trust the US in this, but it is not easy to get a handle on - and why would they not fit him up with something better, something more foolproof? Why would they not seek his extradition from the UK under the irrational one-sided and US-biassed extradition treaty between us?

"Between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2011, the US made 134 requests for extradition to the UK authorities and 75 people were successfully sent to America for trial" - from here: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-q-and-a-is-the-us-uk-extradition-treaty-unfair/9912

Some interesting stuff here - http://internationalextraditionblog.com/2010/12/08/julian-assange-sweden-and-u-s-extradition-treaty/ -

including the conditional extradition process




I have been unable to trace statistics on how often Sweden has refused US extradition requests. It is stated that they have refused none since 2000 but I do not know how many were made. There is however a very critical review of Sweden's record on extradition here http://ferrada-noli.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/swe-extradition-hist.html