{"article":{"id":16540,"heading":"International protest against sentences from Swedish Courts","author":"MY NAME IS GEORGE","created":"2002-05-10 04:48:12","modified":"2005-08-15 00:58:11","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:58:11","article":"

The Call now includes roughly 2500 signatures from 30 different countries.

The homepage for the Call is www.manifest.se\/upprop

1. The Call made a major achievement when the Swedish Supreme Court on April

29th finally decided on a case after the Gothenburg riots. The verdict is a

strong criticism against the lower courts:

a) The sentence for rioting was in this case reduced from 20 months in

prison to 4 months imprison.

b) The claim that this particular riot (which is the most common one in the

courts so far) was directed against the top summit is rejected. On the

contrary, the Supreme court stresses the responsibility of the police for

this riot.

c) The Supreme Court rejects the much used ruling that the riots in

Gothenburg are parts of one whole organized Super-riot.

However, the Supreme court claimed that its slow reaction (32 people already

being sentenced to prison when this ruling came) is a result of neglect from

the defendants - that they haven't appealed against the length of sentences.

But the documents show that no less than 10 defendants have appealad

against that prior to the case that was finally tried in the Supreme Court.

In my view this implicates that it was the pressure from public opinion that

forced the Supreme Court to change its mind and finally pick up a case from

Gothenburg. Your support to this call is part of that pressure!

And only continuing call for justice wil make it possible to reduce the

sentences also for the earlier and coming defendants.

What remains is also that the question of responsibility of the defendants

is raised on the highest level and, of course, that the responsibility of

the police (and politicians) are tried in court. There are innocent people

in prison right now. And there are too many responsible policemen that are

not being tried at all.

2. ACTION-ALARM

Call of social movements - Solidarity with the Gothenburg 41!

Join the international action day June 5th

- against the swedish model of repressing summit protesters and

criminalising them.

For the first time ever at a summit of international governmental

representatives the police shot demonstrators in Gothenburg 2001 with live

ammunition.

They almost killed one person and wounded two, one of them a bystander.

Sweden has set a record during its EU-presidency in spring 2001 in

oppressing summit protests by preventive police strategies, politicians and

media accusing protesters of being terrorists and the worst ever sentences

for summit protests.

238 times longer prison terms in total

The result is that the sentences after the summit protests in Sweden in

total are 238 times harder than in Nice, Prague or Seattle!

In Seattle people were sentenced to a few days of imprisonment -maximum 9

days,

in Prague the sentences were suspended and noone was imprisioned, some were

deported though,

and in Nice two persons were given one month imprisonment each.

In Sweden so far 41 persons have been sentenced to 12 months average

imprisonment being charged with violent rioting. At least 8 more people are

waiting to be put on trial. The maximum length of these sentences in Sweden

is two and a half year -which is 30 times more than the maximum sentence of

any of the previous summits.

In total there are 476 months of imprisonment in Sweden since Gbg 2001.

Record of arresting people at summits or taking them into custody:

Sweden also set a record in terms of preventive actions against

demonstrators at summits in the Western world, both considered as a part of

the total amount of demonstrators at the summit or the total number of

people who have been taken into custody by the police.















































































































































































<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"www.manifest.se\/upprop","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"Join the international action day June 5th against the swedish model of repressing summit protesters and\r\ncriminalising them.","numcomment":2,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2002\/05\/inter5hlmuo.txt","filesize":"8.7 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2002\/05\/16540.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":16541,"heading":"WHERE,S THE LA PROTEST?","article":"IS THERE A PROTEST IN L.A. \r\nWHERE ? WHAT TIME?\r\nWHERE IS THE SWEDISH CONSAL?","author":"NICK","parent_id":16540,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2002-05-10 04:51:00","modified":"2002-05-10 06:00:02","fileurl":""},{"id":16542,"heading":"WHERE,S THE LA PROTEST?","article":"IS THERE A PROTEST IN L.A. \r\nWHERE ? WHAT TIME?\r\nWHERE IS THE SWEDISH CONSAL?","author":"NICK","parent_id":16540,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2002-05-10 04:51:57","modified":"2002-05-10 06:00:02","fileurl":""}]}