On December 23, the citizen journalist Åsa Westerberg was convicted by the District Court of Södertörn for, among other things, incitement against ethnic groups and gross defamation. She was sentenced to a conditional sentence and SEK 10,400 in fines, as well as SEK 25,000 in damages to the state-funded Tomas Åberg, who runs the news organization the National Examiner. Westerberg claims to have been beaten bloody by police when arrested in her own home.

Åsa Westerberg was prosecuted for writing several posts on the US-based social platform MeWe, posts in which she has wrote critically about Islam and Muslims, as well as writing disparagingly about Tomas Åberg and his activities at the National Examiner. The indictments related to hate speech against a people or group, gross libel and slander.

The penalty was a conditional sentence, SEK 10,400 in fines and SEK 25,000 in damages to Åberg. In addition, she is expected to pay SEK 15,000 for her lawyer.

Westerberg herself denies that she wrote the posts and believes that no evidence was presented during the trial.

– There’s really no evidence, it’s a MeWe profile that you haven’t been able to link to me. They have not presented any IP address, they have not presented any evidence that it was I who wrote the posts, she tells Nya Tider.

[link to www.nyatider.nu (secure)]