After leaving the ICRC Melzer held academic positions as research director of the Swiss Competence Centre on Human Rights (University of Zürich), as senior fellow and senior advisor on Emerging Security Challenges (Geneva Centre for Security Policy) and at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.
[7] Melzer visited Assange in prison on 9 May 2019, accompanied by two medical experts specialised in examining potential victims of torture and other means of ill-treatment, to assess the conditions in which he was held.
Melzer asked the UK government to stop Assange's extradition to the US, release him and allow him to "recover his health and rebuild his personal and professional life".
On the issue of sexual violence, they wrote that Melzer's intervention was "both legally erroneous and harmful to the development and protection of human rights law.
"[11] Melzer stood by his statement that the evidence collected in Sweden was not a basis for investigating the suspected rape and expressed hope that it would not divert attention away from the problems in the case of Assange.
Melzer made various criticisms of the Swedish prosecutors, including for changing one of the women's statements without her involvement in order to make it sound like a possible rape.
[18] In the book, Melzer wrote that Assange's treatment "exposes a fundamental systemic failure that severely undermines the integrity of our democratic, rule-of-law institutions.".
Matthias von Hein wrote that the book "raises strong doubts about the strength of our justice system in the face of powerful interests that manipulate and abuse it".