After being convicted for his role in operating The Pirate Bay, former site spokesman Peter Sunde is required to serve a jail sentence, but rather than giving in he's fighting to the bitter end. His battle, however, has just received another setback. Despite Sunde calling for a retrial on evidential issues and allegations of bias, Sweden's Supreme Court has announced the rejection of his application. All hopes now lie with the EU Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Earlier this year the copyright infringement sentence of Peter Sunde was made final. This meant that the former Pirate Bay spokesman should have begun an eight month jail sentence in May, but this did not come to pass.

Despite having the odds stacked against him, Sunde has continued fighting for his freedom. In the same month his sentence was due to begin, Sunde filed a plea with the Swedish government requesting clemency.

In his plea, Sunde highlighted the lack of evidence to back up allegations made against him in the original case, including his participation in advertising deals and the work he is said to have carried out on The Pirate Bay’s load balancer.

Sunde also cited health concerns on top of commercial fears for his fledgling micro-payment business, Flattr. Not least, the former TPB spokesman came back to the claims of bias against two lay-jurors and a judge in the previous hearings (all of which were members of pro-copyright groups), and a policeman who worked on the case while also working for Warner Bros., one of the plaintiffs in the case.

But despite all the effort, it seems that at least for now the legal options in Sweden have been exhausted.

“Peter Sunde has not shown any evidence that may lead to new trial in the case. The Supreme Court therefore rejects the application for revision,” the Supreme Court said in a short statement.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Sunde says he’s not surprised by the decision and that the application was somewhat of a formality before he begins the next phase of his fight.

“I didn’t really expect any other outcome,” he said.

“I just actually put into evidence all of the circumstances, including the US government’s pushing of Sweden, the police officer working for Warner brothers and thus no evidence in my favor ending up in the case, the prosecutor having clearly defined goals of sentencing us, and the issues of bias etc.”

Sunde explains that he wanted to show that no matter what the authorities are confronted with, The Pirate Bay are always guilty.

“I was making a point, that no matter how innocent we are, it doesn’t really matter. Our case was never up for a real trial, it was just up for us to lose,” he adds.

Despite the options in Sweden ending (at least for now) Sunde says that there are other avenues for claim in Europe.

“Now I can go to the European Court of Human Rights and use this denial of appeal as basis for the European Convention being breached. I needed to try all things in Sweden before it was possible for me to try it, and I didn’t want to be sent back to Sweden saying ‘you didn’t try THIS thing yet’.”

In addition to the ECHR application, Sunde says that the Court of Justice is also in receipt of a request for a new trial.