If the government can see beforehand that they would not agree to extradition, I think it&#x27;s just a waste of money to ask the courts whether it would be legal.<p>There&#x27;s nothing legally stopping the Swedish government, at best notions of procedural propriety that are not binding. Truth is even so, ministries meddle with the departments - or are accused of it, with varying degrees of reasonableness - all the time. When the case against Assange was revived (the first prosecutor dismissed it in unusually clear terms), that was as I see it far more pernicious meddling than pre-rejecting extradition of a political refugee would be.