Ex-Expo Lay Judge Cleared Far-Left Militant - Court Says No Bias

STOCKHOLM - A lay judge who once worked as a researcher for the left-wing activist magazine Expo was not biased when she helped acquit a far-left militant who kneed a man in the face, Sweden's Svea Court of Appeal has ruled. The decision cannot be appealed.

The case goes back to 1 May this year. Andreas Klominek, a well-known far-left activist recently convicted of threatening government ministers, kneed activist Nick Alinia in the face while Alinia was carrying out a citizen's arrest of Klominek's son, Ossian.

Stockholm District Court accepted that Klominek had in fact kneed Alinia in the face. He was still cleared. The court said Klominek believed his son was under criminal attack and was acting in what Swedish law calls putative self-defence - self-defence against a threat that only existed in his own mind - and that a knee to the face was not "obviously indefensible".

The Professional Judge Wanted a Conviction

The verdict was not unanimous. In Swedish district courts, one professional judge sits with three lay judges appointed by the political parties, and the lay judges can outvote the professional.

That is what happened here. Judge Céline Holmberg wanted Klominek convicted of assault and sentenced to 50 hours of community service. In her view, Alinia's handling of Ossian was not unlawful, so there was no attack to defend against. She also noted that the scene was calm when Klominek arrived, that he never asked his son whether he was all right, and that he lunged at Alinia as soon as someone shouted that they were "Nazis".

She was overruled by the three politically appointed lay judges.

Expo Background and Antifa Links

One of them, Anna-Sofia Quensel of the Left Party, worked as a researcher at Expo from 2011 to 2017 - a magazine that has written critically about Alinia himself. She has also been photographed alongside Mathias Wåg, a founder of the militant group Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA).

The other two, Yvonne Bernhardsson and Jan-Åke Porseryd, are both Social Democrat local politicians in Stockholm. Bernhardsson is married to Social Democrat veteran and former MP Bo Bernhardsson. Porseryd spent 20 years working at the state broadcaster Sveriges Radio.

"Not Enough"

After prosecutor Marie Bastin appealed the acquittal, Alinia filed a roughly 20-page objection asking the appeal court to declare Quensel biased, scrap the verdict and send the case back for a new trial.

He pointed to her years at Expo, the magazine's coverage of him and her ties to Wåg.

Svea Court of Appeal rejected all of it. The circumstances Alinia raised "cannot, either individually or together, be considered capable of undermining the lay judge's impartiality", the court wrote. It noted that Quensel was not alleged to have written any of Expo's articles about Alinia, and that an undated photo of her standing next to Wåg was not enough to show bias.

The objection was dismissed, along with the request for a retrial in the district court. The prosecutor's appeal of the acquittal itself will now be heard by the appeal court.