Julian Assange has hidden for long enough now that Sweden has, rather grumpily, given up. But there are others still in the game.

Prosecutor Marianne Ny claimed she "did everything that was possible for us to do", but she expects her efforts will be scrutinised by official bodies such as Sweden's Chancellor of Justice.

Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing. But years ago, during the absurd stalemate when Assange refused to go to Sweden and Ms Ny refused to go to London, there were already strong voices arguing she should have been more pragmatic and less principled.

Under Swedish law the trial could not have proceeded until Assange was on their soil. But more could have been done, sooner, to prepare.

The strength of Assange's diplomatic protection was bolstered by the incompleteness of the prosecutors' case, and the intransigence of the investigators.

It looked like the prosecutors were trying to bully him out of his hole, and he just refused to go. Without Assange's testimony, they couldn't complete the case against him.

And when prosecutors eventually 'interviewed' Assange in London, it turned out to be just a series of statements delivered by Assange, hampered by a daisy-chain of interpreters.

Only two people know what happened in a bedroom in Stockholm in August 2010 (conspiracy theories aside). Assange's version of the story, published in a statement last year, may excuse him of criminality but it hardly paints him as a moral actor.

But the investigation is over, and the rape allegation was never properly investigated, let alone proven. The failure of Swedish prosecutors to adequately investigate an allegation of a serious crime is not only due to Assange's refusal to go back to Sweden. It is their own failure. Justice has not been served.

In December 2015 Assange won a UN body's decision - influential though not enforceable - that he was being illegally detained by the combined effect of UK and Swedish law.

His legal position keeps getting stronger, whatever you think of the ethics (and, judging by social media, opinions are sharply and angrily divided).

To celebrate, Assange indulged on Friday in one of his theatrical moments on the embassy balcony, posing grandly, fist in the air.

Assange's improvised speech went in search of Mandela-like rhetoric. But Mandela would have taken questions.

And he was never going to step past that balcony.

His problem is not the still-live UK arrest warrant for bail-jumping, which is unlikely to result in jail time. The problem is that his arrest would likely be followed by extradition to the US, which has expressed a continuing and strong desire to arrest him and charge him over the leaks of confidential files to WikiLeaks.

Assange's team argue he has iron-clad constitutional protection, the same kind visibly protecting journalists across America multiple times a day right now, over a torrent of leaks from a dysfunctional White House.

But judge Assange by his actions. If his case is so strong, why wouldn't he simply go to the US, fight, win, then embrace his freedom?

His legal team seem to be arguing that he could not be tried fairly in the US. If this is true, it's a stunning indictment on modern justice in a major democracy.

So here were are again. Allegations of a serious crime. And Assange determined not to face them.

D??j?? vu.