Swedish authorities will not release their prisoner Assange on gallant pressures in the form appeals or opinion articles. Even if fact-grounded and well written, and even if that is accomplished by decent people within the Justice system itself, such as former prosecutor Rolf Hillegren’s debate article [1] in SvD.
Published in Professorsblogg.com 13 Jan 2014
"Swedish prestige" may be one contributing factor, but one real reason is that these Swedish political authorities, to a high extent alienated on behalf of superpower U.S., are not any longer sensitive to juridical opinions or even political decisions of their own people. The Swedish rulers shall do on Assange no more, not less, than precisely what Washington shall instruct them to do.
A clear demonstration of the above is the actual discussion on the Swedish defence, taking place in these very moments in Sälen amid dignitaries from government and the military establishments of Sweden and abroad. While the institution Swedish Civil Contingency Agency disclosed these days that their last nation-wide poll shows that over the half of Swedes disapprove the current (NATO-reliance) Swedish defense design, PM Reinfeldt categorically dismissed at the conference any flaw in such defense concept. This, in spite that only two per cent of Swedes answering the poll considered the Swedish defense being “very good”. PM Reinfeldt even declared that the Swedish defense has been made "stronger" by his government.
Julian Assange is not standing as a captive in London for the legal-wise allegations under discussion by the well-intentioned piece of Mr Hillegren in SvD.
Assange’s freedom of movements was annulled by those in power a cause of the Diplomatic Cables, and because he is the forerunner of the organization WikiLeaks.
In this context, another reason of why Carl Bildt and Fredrik Reinfeldt will not “change their minds”, lies in the fact that such decision rather belongs to the international corporate establishment targeted and hit by WikiLeaks and the whistleblowing movement it generated, or fearing to be hit in the future. In other words, “liberating or not liberating enemy Julian Assange” is highly a purely domestic Swedish issue. What are the relationships between this economic-military international establishment, as a new epicentre of strategic decisions, and local shareholder governments such the one of Bildt & Reinfeldt, is an issue discussed in the “PESCI theses” developed in these columns.
With the above said, I would insist in my assessments stated in “Five political scenarios that can break the Swedish obstruction of Ecuador’s asylum to Mr. Assange”.
For if this confrontation phenomenon has partly an economic-financial main ingredient, and partly a geopolitical main ingredient, the way of solve it would be most likely if resorting to measures at the same level. A popular movement in Latin-American agitating a boycott to Swedish manufactures goods– the JAS fighter included- if Sweden would not respect the sovereign right of Ecuador of giving asylum to Assange, will surely do more to avert the conspicuous Swedish capitalists (whose enterprises are in fact international financed) deciding the fate of Julian Assange.
The history of Sweden's foreign policy appears being not more complicated than that. And, the Swedish legal system has historically been subordinated to Sweden's foreign policy. On this particular case, Prosecutor-General Anders Perklev declared, referring to Mr. Hillegren opinions in SvD: "I don't think that they are at all representative of prosecutors in general".
References
[1] R Hillegren, "Dags för Sverige att avsluta fallet Assange", SvT, 12 Jan 2014. http://www.svd.se/opinion/brannpunkt/dags-for-sverige-att-avsluta-fallet-assange_8887418.svd
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