RESISTANCE NEWS. Earlier this year, Resistance Man Bo Nilsson was sentenced for assault and “incitement to racial hatred” following two incidents during last autumn’s election campaign. Now the Upper Norrland Court of Appeal has reduced his fine.
In February this year, Luleå District Court sentenced Bo Nilsson, the Nordic Resistance Movement’s lead municipal council candidate in Boden, for “incitement to racial hatred” and assault during last autumn’s election campaign.
According to the court, Nilsson’s thought crime consisted of comments he reportedly made during his 1 May speech in 2018. The court writes that Nilsson “said that homosexuals are sick and perverse”, “compared homosexuals and homosexuality with pigs and dirtiness” and that he also “compared people with foreign origin and immigrants to invasive species and said they are criminal and should be sent out of the country”.
The assault element of the charge stems from Nilsson’s supposedly having aimed a blow at a teenager (and son of Martina Grenholm, one of “Boden against Racism”’s most vociferous representatives), after he publicly taunted Nilsson over vandalism of Nilsson’s garage. This happened when the teen, together with a group of other people, attempted to disrupt the Resistance Movement’s election campaign in Boden.
According to witnesses, the teenager snidely asked Nilsson, “How is your garage?” before the alleged assault. Immediately prior to the comment, one of Grenholm’s friends also reportedly made an extremely degrading remark about Nilsson’s daughter, when she walked past to deliver a present to her father.
However, Nilsson claims he didn’t strike the teenager, and in fact Nilsson himself was injured when the police took him into custody during the incident. The teenager says that the blow “grazed” his neck, allegedly causing some redness to appear. According to the court, a redness could be seen “with some difficulty” on the teen’s neck on a photograph which was taken the day after.
Luleå district court sentenced Nilsson for aggravated assault and ordered him to pay 5,000 kronor in damages to the teenager, as well as to pay the costs for his injured party counsel, totalling 11,427 kronor. In addition Nilsson was ordered to pay a daily fine amounting to 18,000 kronor over 120 days.
District court reduces sentence
While Luleå District Court seemed to completely accept the teenager’s version of events, the Upper Norrland Court of Appeal has taken into consideration the provocation that caused the incident.
The court of appeal writes that “the investigation has otherwise revealed that Bo Nilsson’s garage was vandalised a number of times and the only purpose the court can see regarding the [teenager’s] comment about the garage was to provoke”.
The court wrote further that there is no “reliable report regarding other consequences of the blow besides […] a redness”, which moreover was only observed the same day and not the day after, as the district court had believed.
In addition, the court wrote that “the teenager himself had been involved in events preceding the blow by saying something that he must have realised would provoke Bo Nilsson” and that he therefore “waived the protection for personal privacy that damages for a serious offence are intended to guarantee”.
As such, the court of appeal completely rejected the teen’s demand for damages and deemed the assault as minor. Furthermore the court reduced the daily fine to 80 payments of 110 kronor. Nilsson’s obligation to pay for his defence and the teen’s court costs was also reduced from 11,427 kronor to 8,570 kronor.
Boden against Racism called the court’s decision a “scandal of justice” and wrote on their Facebook page: “It’s not about the boy getting enormous sums of damages but that he should get 5,000 kronor for the offence. That’s the lowest and normal level of penalty for an assault, even for a minor assault, which the court of appeal reduced the punishment to. So why they chose to say that the assault is minor and simultaneously take away the damages is very strange and disturbing. But it is obvious that the legal system is not on the side of the victim.”
The Nordic Resistance Movement is currently organising a collection to cover the costs of Bo Nilsson’s fine. If you live outside of Sweden and would like to contribute, the bank details are:
IBAN: SE21 9500 0099 6018 0530 7665
BIC: NDEASESS
Please mark payments with a note reading “Bosse”.
All excess money raised will go to others who have incurred costs from the system in the struggle for a free and united North.
