For starters, the women did not make these accusations. A prosecutor have.

This distinction is worth making. At no point did these women go to the police and claim that Assange had raped them - not even the Swedish prosecution has made the claim they did. They did go to the police and ask questions that someone at the police then decided to interpret as indicating that a crime might have taken place, and start an investigation.

They then were interviewed, in situations that subsequent reports indicate may have been blatant violations of police procedure - no recording was apparently made, one of the police officers involved was allegedly a friend of one of the witnesses.

The results were statements that have not been formally released, nor been verified or scrutinized by anyone independent.

What is allegedly the police reports were on the other hand illegally leaked to a Swedish newspaper, and Assanges name was confirmed by authorities in conjunction with the case in blatant violation of Swedish police procedures. But we don't even know if the leaked police reports are accurate or final copies.

Subsequent to the investigation, the first prosecutor to get involved in the case looked at the police reports and decided they indicated that no crime had taken part.

What is allegedly descriptions supported by the contents of these statements was then used in the arrest warrants formulated by a second prosecutor that stepped in in a highly unusual move and reopened the investigation.

The reasons for why she stepped in to reopen just this case, despite how unusual it is to do so when another prosecutor has closed the case, has not at any point been explained.

In retrospect, it is now also being alleged that one of the women is refusing to sign statements about the case at all.

In other words, so far we don't even know what the women actually said to the police.

What we know is the content of a highly unusual and highly illegal leak to a Swedish newspaper, and how one prosecutor has chosen to interpret their words in an arrest warrant written with the express purpose of ensuring that a UK court would extradite Assange to the UK.

We do know one prosecutor found the police investigation had not found any evidence that any crime had taken place at all, and another found it did. We do know there are a lot of open questions about how the statements were collected, and about lack of documentation. We do have reason to question whether at least one of the women is willing to put her name behind the police interpretation of what she said. We don't know whether they made any actual allegations that amount to any crimes.

Maybe it is all accurate, and perhaps he is guilty. But it isn't even remotely clear whether or not there even should be a case to answer.

> They may not be true, but the truthfulness of the allegations is outside the scope of an extradition.

That is true, and it is not surprising that UK courts ordered the extradition.

But the real issue here is also not whether there is a genuine reason for a UK court to approve an extradition, but whether or not there is something going on that gives reason to be concerned that these accusations are not the full story.

Especially in a case where the Swedish prosecution have had a year or so to interview him in London, yet have chosen not to while claiming they can't. At the same time, somehow Swedish police has been able to go off to Poland to interview two suspected Polish murderers about a double homicide.

So either Swedish police has just risked messing up a double homicide case, or the Swedish prosecutor in the Assange case is at best misinformed about something she ought to know about, at worst being intentionally deceptive.

Even if we don't buy the US extradition idea, this is still a strange situation. The argument that they somehow need him on Swedish soil is nonsense - Swedish police provably regularly conduct interviews outside of Sweden, and you can provably be charged and tried in absentia in Sweden, despite many claims to the contrary.

So why does the Swedish prosecutor resist taking up evidence in a rape case for a year while making claims about why she is not that can not be supported by fact?