Published March 26, 2024 at 2:41 p.m.
Law & Right. The anti-immigration profile Ingrid Carlqvist sued Malmö politician Anton Sauer (C) for defamation after he called her a “Nazi”. In today's verdict, the Malmö district court finds that Carlqvist has indeed been defamed by the politician – but she is still not entitled to damages and must instead pay his court costs of SEK 60,000.
– It is the strangest sentence I have seen and my attorney says the same, says Ingrid Carlqvist.
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Sandra Ahrén, judge in the case.
The case concerned two posts on Twitter (today X) with Nazi accusations that Anton Sauer posted in December 2018.
Ingrid Carlqvist was helped by the Defamation Ombudsman, FO, to pursue the case in court. In January 2023, she filed a lawsuit at the district court and requested that the left-wing politician – who is the group leader of the Center Party in Malmö – should pay her damages because he was guilty of defamation.
The district court certainly considers that the publications meet all the requirements that apply for the publication to be considered defamation. It is not an unpunished value judgment and the posts have aimed to subject Ingrid Carlqvist to contempt. According to the court, she “nor can be considered to be such a public person who, in the sense of the law, has to withstand more critical scrutiny and evaluation than the average person, which means that the man's actions were not justifiable”.
“The act was intentional and must be assessed as defamation of the normal degree”, states the judgment.
However, according to the court, the case has only dealt with the question of the right to damages due to infringement. The district court's opinion is that the publications had a limited spread and the court also refers to Carlqvist “publishing Twitter posts in which she questioned in any case the correctness of the statistics regarding the death toll as a result of the Holocaust”.
Accused for having defended freedom of speech
“These publications, and also the publications she made concerning the Nordic Resistance Movement's right to freedom of expression, even if they were not to be perceived as Ingrid Carlqvist herself claiming that she was a Nazi, may be said to have included a certain risk-taking on her part in relation to she could be called a Nazi by people in other parts of the political landscape,” Malmö district court writes in its judgment.
– In an overall assessment, the district court finds that the violation is not so serious that the woman is justified for compensation for infringement, says councilor Sandra Ahrén.
Because Ingrid Carlqvist loses the civil case, she must compensate Anton Sauer's legal costs with just under SEK 60,000.
– It is absurd that the court recognizes that she has been defamed but that she does not receive damages, says Defamation Ombudsman Christian Petersen in a comment to Fria Times.
Ingrid Carlqvist is on the same line.
Will be appealed
– Malmö district court finds that Sauer was guilty of defamation of me , but I am not considered sufficiently violated and therefore I lose and he goes free, she says and continues:
– It is as if a court were to find that someone raped a woman but because she wore a short skirt and followed with him home, the rapist escapes punishment. I am seriously concerned that a judgment like this has been written at all and what damage such a judgment does to public legal awareness. So is it the victim who must reimburse the perpetrator's legal fees?
According to Carlqvist, the verdict will “of course” be appealed.