I have the same question as this OP. I didn’t think any of the answers were helpful enough. Basically everything I could find regarding Assange’s asylum with Ecuador stems from the threat of Sweden extraditing him to the U.S., however the threat of politically motivated deportation remains regardless of what happens in Sweden; the U.K. can just as well do it.
The Swedish government allowed in the past the CIA to kidnap people inside Sweden and fly them outside of Sweden and Assange was afraid that this will also happen in his case.
My reading is that it could happen in any country, but it did happen frequently in Sweden. So, while the risk is non-zero everywhere, it still makes sense to avoid the place where it is too high.
So why did Assange even go to Sweden? Another answer says:
The point of placing the servers in Sweden isn’t to provide safety against American pressure. It’s that Sweden has a law that punishes people who try to uncover the anonymous sources of whistleblowers. Wikileaks wanted to use that law to threaten people who tried to uncover Wikileaks sources with suing them in Sweden for doing so. Wikileaks was of the opinion that having their servers in Sweden would allow them to use this law. Sweden responded by saying that the law only covers the sources of the Swedish media and that Wikileaks isn’t Swedish media just because it has a server in Sweden.
My reading is that Sweden is a good place for whistleblowers’ servers, but not necessarily for the whistleblowers themselves.
(Note: I have no opinion on factual correctness of these answers; I just posted them because they seem relevant to your question.)
I have the same question as this OP. I didn’t think any of the answers were helpful enough. Basically everything I could find regarding Assange’s asylum with Ecuador stems from the threat of Sweden extraditing him to the U.S., however the threat of politically motivated deportation remains regardless of what happens in Sweden; the U.K. can just as well do it.
One of the answers says:
My reading is that it could happen in any country, but it did happen frequently in Sweden. So, while the risk is non-zero everywhere, it still makes sense to avoid the place where it is too high.
So why did Assange even go to Sweden? Another answer says:
My reading is that Sweden is a good place for whistleblowers’ servers, but not necessarily for the whistleblowers themselves.
(Note: I have no opinion on factual correctness of these answers; I just posted them because they seem relevant to your question.)