> All he had to do was answer some questions to the Swedish prosecutor.
And he did, and as a result they finally dropped the investigation.
It was the Swedish prosecutor who waited 4 years before finally interviewing him before Christmas last year, because she - despite the statement of Swedish legal experts - stubbornly insisted she couldn't interview him in the UK.
Except it appears she could, so one might ask questions about why she chose to let it drag on for so long. I can understand holding out for a bit initially in the hope he'd give in, but to me it appears that she in letting it drag on this long failed to do her job - it did not serve justice to refuse. If she after the interview still believed he needed to be interviewed in Sweden for some reason, she could have made that case. But refusing not to interview him because the conditions were not to her liking? That stinks. Not necessarily of what Assange thinks it stinks of (see below), but it stinks.
> I still fail to understand why Sweden, NOT a NATO member, would have been more dangerous than the UK. Also, Sweden is not exactly the worst place in the world to spend prison time (which was only the worst case scenario.)
Whether or not it was realistic, there were two things to fuel Assange's fear:
Firstly, the irregularities surrounding the case. He was first told he could go, then suddenly a new prosecutor picked up the case and restarted investigations.
Then said prosecutor doggedly insisted he had to come back to Sweden instead of interviewing him in the UK, despite insisting over and over it was just part of the investigation.
Additionally police investigation records were illegally handed to the press.
I've mentioned in the past that I think Ny and one of the lawyers involved had personal reasons for wanting to use Assange as an example to push for a stricter interpretation of Swedish rape law (she has argued for that in the past). It probably had nothing to do with the US - but there were multiple things that were unusual. But with Assange paranoid about the US, it's not surprising how he interpreted that.
Secondly, there was a past case where Swedish police black-bagged two political asylum seekers and handed them to the CIA (who promptly handed them to Egypt - the regime they'd been seeking asylum from - where they were tortured), in violation of Swedish law.
Years later, Wikileaks revealed that the US ambassador had been called to the Swedish foreign ministry to answer questions about why rendition flights were still going through Sweden, with the support of Swedish ground staff, despite having been officially told to stop; the Swedish public was not told of the latter until Wikileaks revealed it.
It's not unsurprising if Assange again would interpret that as implying that whatever Swedens official position is, there is from his point of view a reason to fear that 1) either there are elements in Sweden willing to break the law to hand him over, or 2) that the US might just pick him up and ignore Swedish objections. Maybe it's not realistic, but the issue is not whether or not it is realistic, but whether or not Assange feared it might happen.