Climate Extremist Escapes Prison - Appeal Cuts Sentence to Fine

TRANEMO - Climate extremist Ebba Klemedtsson escapes a two-month prison sentence after illegal actions against peat extraction at Grimsås bog. The Court of Appeal for Western Sweden acquitted her of criminal damage and instead handed her day fines for six counts of unlawful interference.

The court also dismissed the unlawful-entry charge, citing Sweden's right of public access. All 15 activists covered by the appeal are still convicted of offences.

In summer 2024, the network Återställ våtmarker (Restore Wetlands) glued and chained itself to machines, blocked ditches and tried to stop Neova's licensed peat work on the bog in Tranemo municipality. Police were called repeatedly. Several activists were detained.

On 23 July 2025, Borås District Court convicted 17 people. All were found guilty of unlawful interference. Some also got convictions for unlawful entry, criminal damage and violent resistance. Klemedtsson received two months in prison. For Jonas Olausson, earlier penalties - including two months in prison - were ordered to cover the Grimsås crimes as well.

Criminal damage charge collapses

The appeal ruling came on 4 November and covered 15 of the original 17 convicts. The biggest change concerns Klemedtsson, convicted in the lower court of five counts of unlawful interference and one count of criminal damage.

The damage charge related to 25 July 2024, when she sat on an excavator arm while a chain was wrapped around it. Prosecutors said her actions damaged a hydraulic piston. Appeal judges found that unproven. Witness accounts of the damage were vague, and no detailed probe of the damage was presented. It was also not shown that she had been locked to the machine with the chain.

She was therefore acquitted of criminal damage. The same incident was instead counted as unlawful interference, bringing her total to six such counts - all at fine level.

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About 3,000 kronor left to pay

Prison was replaced with 180 day fines of 50 kronor each - 9,000 kronor in total. Of those, 120 day fines are treated as already paid because she had been detained in the case. Roughly 3,000 kronor remains.

Right of public access - but not a licence to stop work

Appeal judges rejected the prosecutor's bid for aggravated or ordinary unlawful entry. They held that the work area on the bog is not the kind of place covered by that offence. Even with peat extraction underway, it remains a nature area where people may in principle stay under the right of public access (allemansrätten).

A 25-year extraction permit, the court said, does not wipe out that right. But the judges drew a hard line: public access does not give anyone the right to disrupt a lawful operation on the bog. Neova was presumed to be working under its permit; activists' claims to the contrary lacked support.

Olausson's prison term stands

Jonas Olausson was cleared on one unlawful-entry count from 6 August 2024. He remains convicted of two counts of unlawful interference. The two-month prison sentence from a separate Solna case in May 2025 still covers the Grimsås offences. No new prison term was added.

Several other activists had fines adjusted. Every one of the 15 still walks away convicted of unlawful interference. Claims that demonstration rights or necessity should wipe out criminal liability were rejected.

Conflict at the bog has continued after the district court ruling, with further actions in 2025 and 2026. Those later incidents were not part of this appeal.