The Mountain Will Go to Mohammed

They've been insisting Assange come to them.

 

Obviously, they could have.

This seems like evidence that the Swedes are less willing to cowtow to the US than they were four years ago, likely due to all the Snowden leaks.  Another, perhaps less likely, possibility is that the US has quit pressuring them on the Assange issue.

In a statement, [the Swedish prosecutor] said the reason for her change of mind was that the statute of limitations on several of the crimes of which he is suspected runs out in August 2015.

  

Guardian

Or maybe that.

Swedish prosecutors are expected to question Julian Assange in his London refuge after the lead prosecutor bowed to pressure from his lawyers, Swedish legal opinion and the courts to attempt to break the deadlock in the case.

[...]

Assange’s lawyers, who are appealing against his arrest warrant in Sweden’s highest court, have complained bitterly about the prosecutor’s refusal to travel to London to speak to him – an essential step under Swedish jurisprudence to establish whether Assange can be formally charged.

[...]

Rejecting Assange’s appeal in November, a lower court directed sharp criticism at the prosecutor for failing to move the case forward.

[...]

[The Swedish prosecutor] has argued that interrogating Assange abroad would be complicated and have little point because he would still have to travel to Sweden for trial, should sufficient grounds emerge. However, she is obliged to drop the case against him unless she believes there are “reasonable grounds” for suspicion of his guilt.

I’m going to guess she’ll find suspicion enough in the end. Of course, I guessed the reason for the change of heart about going to Assange was because of the change in the world’s opinion of the United States, so don’t pay any attention to me.

“Now time is running out and I therefore believe that I have to accept a loss of quality in the investigation and take the risk that the hearing will not take the investigation forward, because no other option is available as long as Assange does not make himself available in Sweden,” she said.

The hearing might not take the investigation forward? Why is that? Maybe the statue of limitations does have less weight than the change in world opinion, and she’s laying the groundwork for an eventual dropping of the case.

Anne Ramberg, head of Sweden’s Bar Association, said she welcomed the move, but also added that “it should have been taken long before”.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, a lawyer for one of the women in the case, said she had changed her mind on questioning Assange in London. Last year she dismissed as “empty and ill-informed speculation” calls by Swedish politicians and top legal figures to do so.

The proposed interviews in London will be conducted by the deputy prosecutor in the case, Ingrid Isgren, and a police investigator. Assange’s lawyers maintain that he has already given a DNA sample to police when he was first arrested in the UK in 2010.

UPDATE: Ecuador responds

"If they had accepted Ecuador's offer to question him (at the embassy) 1,000 days ago, it would have saved us all a lot of money and trouble," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino wrote on Twitter.

"On Monday Assange will mark 1,000 days inside our embassy in London. From the first day we have offered to let (prosecutors) question him and they didn't do it," he tweeted.

"The reason for taking Assange's statement now, after 1,000 days, is the statute of limitations. And if the statute of limitations were five years?"

  The Local (Sweden)

And…from John Pilger, a financial supporter:

One of Assange's main financial supporters, Australian-born campaigning journalist John Pilger, described the Swedish prosecutor's offer as "demonstrably cynical".

"In finally agreeing to come to London to interview Julian Assange... she has waited until just before Sweden's statute of limitations nullifies her threadbare case against him," Pilger said.

"She has wasted four and a half years of Assange's life -- against whom she has never had a shred of evidence to charge him with any crime.