Four ‘active club’ members sentenced to prison in Sweden for racist assaults

Original article by Miranda Bryant in Stockholm

Four men from the Swedish branch of the international far-right “active club” network have been sentenced to prison after they were found guilty of several racially motivated assaults in Stockholm.

In a verdict handed down on Tuesday, Stockholm district court said the three violent attacks, which targeted three men in quick succession on the night of 27 August, constituted hate crimes.

The case, which is the first of its kind in Sweden, represents a landmark moment for the active club movement, a network of loosely structured groups that meet in gyms and aim to promote white nationalist and misogynist ideology.

In a statement, the court said Aktivklubb Sverige (AKS) was “considered a far-right organisation with clear racist elements and which engages in martial arts”.

Within a 30-minute period, the four men, who were out on a bar crawl, attacked three men who, the prosecutor said, were selected based on their ethnicity. At least two of the men were seen making Nazi salutes.

The men, aged between 21 and 23, were jailed for between six months and three years and will have to pay damages.

The prosecutor described the acts as unprovoked acts of violence. One of the men was also convicted of vandalism, including for drawing a far-right symbol on a shop window.

“At least two of the men made Hitler salutes during the night in question,” Stockholm district court said in a statement. “All of the plaintiffs have a different ethnic background than the defendants. According to the verdict, all of the crimes for which the men are convicted have hate crime motives, with the exception of the vandalism.”

District attorney Gustav Andersson said that investigators performing house searches found “material and symbols that show that all four [men] have connections to a rightwing extremist movement”.

Among the victims were Mohammad Aluaudt Allah, a Syrian refugee, who was kicked unconscious on Birger Jarlsgatan, a street in central Stockholm. The court ruled that this attack was an aggravated assault. The investigation found that the four men laughed while they kicked him, after punching him in the back of the head. The attack left the 42-year-old with concussion and damage to his teeth.

Aluaudt Allah has said he saw Sweden as a “land of peace” when he fled Syria. Last month, he said in an interview that he could no longer go outside without feeling panic and had left the country.

“I am proud to be a Swedish citizen – but right now it feels hard to be in Sweden,” he told Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “I love Sweden, but I don’t know if Sweden loves me.”

The political climate in Sweden, where the centre-right government depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, had “created a sense of impunity for violent Nazi groups”, he added. “They may feel that they are being given permission to exercise their hatred and attack us.”

The men were also convicted of assaulting a 43-year-old man during which they shouted a racial expletive at him. Since the attack he has suffered from headaches and problems with his vision.

Later, three of the men attacked a 27-year-old man, punching and kicking him before attempting to drag him on to a train platform.

During the trial, one of the victims broke down and said the attack was the “lowest moment” of his life.

The accused had denied the charges against them, save for the final assault, which was caught on security cameras. They claimed they acted in self-defence.

The victims’ lawyer, Elias Bulale, said all three men had suffered gravely as a result of the attacks and the process of bringing their assailants to justice.

One of the men could not work after the attack and all three were made to “feel unsafe and scared as a result of what happened to them”, said Bulale.

CVE, the Swedish centre for preventing violent extremism, said there were believed to be about 10 active clubs in Sweden carrying out regular activities, with the most influential known as the “White Boys” and “Gym XIV” in Värmland County, near the border with Norway. They have also been found to have close connections with groups in Europe and the US.

“The Aktivklubb supporters are engaging in activities such as mixed martial arts in order to build a strong physical capacity to use violence; the active clubs also place emphasis on a strong social media presence as a way to recruit new members,” said CVE’s acting deputy director, Maria Öhman.

In order to counter their activities, she said, there needed to be “close cooperation and strong coordination” between municipalities, local police and schools. Schools, she said, needed to focus on “democracy-strengthening issues” and identify individuals who showed far-right sympathies early on.