Ecuador has said Britain threatened to send police into the embassy

[struggle4progress]

7. The natural guess is: Assange effectively gave a bunch of officials the one-finger salute,

and they're now interested to be sure his behavior isn't regarded as normative

The Swedish authorities were in communication with Assange's lawyer to try to schedule an interrogation, but as soon as the lawyer learned the authorities intended to take Assange into custody, Assange skipped out of Sweden for the UK. The authorities then thought they had an agreement for Assange to return to Sweden for interrogation in October 2010, but Assange stiffed them on that too. Based on this experience, the Swedish authorities opposed bail in the UK, but did not prevail on that. Assange dragged out his suit for a year and a half, and then when he had definitely lost in the UK, he didn't bother with an appeal to Strasbourg but simply jumped bail and hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy

So he's a high-profile scofflaw from both the Swedish PoV and also from the UK's PoV

It's certainly not to Sweden's advantage to say, "Oh, he's too much of a pain-in-the-butt to bother with", and it's not to the UK's advantage to say that either