With the investigation hanging over his head, Assange struggled to build on the momentum of the Iraq and Afghanistan logs revealing systematic war crimes committed by the US and UK.
"The involved governments had successfully snatched the spotlight directed at them by WikiLeaks, turned it around, and pointed it at Assange," Melzer observes.
They have been doing the same ever since.
Assange was given permission to leave Sweden after the new prosecutor assigned to the case repeatedly declined to interview him a second time (p153-4).
But as soon as Assange departed for London, an Interpol Red Notice was issued, another extraordinary development given its use for serious international crimes, setting the stage for the fugitive-from-justice narrative (p167).
A European Arrest Warrant was approved by the UK courts soon afterwards - but, again exceptionally, after the judges had reversed the express will of the British parliament that such warrants could only be issued by a "judicial authority" in the country seeking extradition, not the police or a prosecutor (p177-9).
A law was passed shortly after the ruling to close that loophole and make sure no one else would suffer Assange's fate (p180).
As the noose tightened around the neck not only of Assange but WikiLeaks too - the group was denied server capacity, its bank accounts were blocked, credit companies refused to process payments (p172) - Assange had little choice but to accept that the US was the moving force behind the scenes.
He hurried into the Ecuadorean embassy after being offered political asylum. A new chapter of the same story was about to begin.
British officials in the Crown Prosecution Service, as the few surviving emails show, were the ones bullying their Swedish counterparts to keep going with the case as Swedish interest flagged. The UK, supposedly a disinterested party, insisted behind the scenes that Assange must be required to leave the embassy - and his asylum - to be interviewed in Stockholm (p174).
A CPS lawyer told Swedish counterparts "don't you dare get cold feet!" (p186).
As Christmas neared, the Swedish prosecutor joked about Assange being a present, "I am OK without" In fact, it would be a shock to get that one!" (p187).
When she discussed with the CPS Swedish doubts about continuing the case, she apologised for "ruining your weekend" (p188).
In yet another email, a British CPS lawyer advised "please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request" (p176).
Embassy spying operationThat may explain why William Hague, the UK's foreign secretary at the time, risked a major diplomatic incident by threatening to violate Ecuadorean sovereignty and invade the embassy to arrest Assange (p184).
And why Sir Alan Duncan, a UK government minister, made regular entries in his diary, later published as a book, on how he was working aggressively behind the scenes to get Assange out of the embassy (p200, 209, 273, 313).
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