The Sweden Democrats’ Coordination Chief at the Government Offices, Gustav Gellerbrant, has already filed a police report and sued the Social Democrats for aggravated defamation after the party’s campaign with Expo during the election period. Now his partner, who works as a political secretary for the Sweden Democrats in the parliament, is also going to court. The woman is demanding 20,000 SEK in damages from Social Democrat commentator Daniel Suhonen, head of the S-affiliated think tank Katalys, who has campaigned claiming she is a “spy suspect” and “probably a Russian agent.”
The background is the article published by the far-left exposé site Expo on September 3rd, right in the final stretch of the election campaign, and presented as an “investigation.”
The article highlighted that Gustav Gellerbrant’s Russian-born partner, who has lived in Sweden for 22 years, was involved in a Russian theater in Stockholm and, about ten to twelve years ago, shared posts on social media that Expo described as pro-Russian.
The same day Expo’s article was published, S-profile Daniel Suhonen, head of the Social Democratic think tank Katalys, went on the X platform and called the woman “Gustav Gellerbrant’s spy-suspect wife.”
In his post, he demanded that SVT hold SD leader Jimmie Åkesson accountable on Aktuellt for how the issue impacted Sweden’s security.
The Social Democratic think tank Katalys also published a video on Facebook where Daniel Suhonen showed photos of the woman and Gustav Gellerbrant in the background, mentioned her name, and claimed that she is probably a Russian agent in Sweden.
– So we have a guy, Gellerbrant, who lives with a woman who is probably a Russian agent. Absolutely astonishing information, said Daniel Suhonen in the video.
The woman: “Completely unfounded”
The SD woman is now suing Daniel Suhonen in Stockholm District Court. Her primary request is that Suhonen be convicted of aggravated defamation and ordered to pay 20,000 SEK in damages. Secondarily, she asks that he be convicted of standard defamation and pay 10,000 SEK.
The statement of claim emphasizes that not even Expo’s original publication contained any assertions that she was an agent for a foreign power or suspected of any crime.
The woman also stresses that following the publication, she has not been informed of any crime suspicions by either the Security Service or the police. In a comment to Expressen, the SD woman has stated that the accusations against her are “completely unfounded.”
Expo reported and forced to three corrections
In addition to the defamation lawsuits against the Social Democrats and Daniel Suhonen, both Gustav Gellerbrant, through his legal counsel Iman Bayazi, and his partner have reported Expo’s publication to the Press Ombudsman, MO.
Since the article was published in September, Expo, with fake news writers Jonathan Leman and Maria Georgieva, has been forced to make no less than three corrections in the text.
Two of these concern incorrect information about the Russian theater in which the woman was involved. This is also not the first time that the self-appointed investigator of disinformation has had problems with the veracity of its own publications. Samnytt has previously highlighted a long row of articles with incorrect or misleading information from the far-left exposé site.
The third correction concerns a false claim in Expo’s article that she had entered into a sham marriage when she came to Sweden. In fact, the woman has never been married and states that the article contains further inaccuracies.
Ygeman continues the campaign in Parliament
Even though Gustav Gellerbrant earlier this week both filed a police report and sued the Social Democrats for aggravated defamation after the party’s fake CV in social media, where he is described as part of a “Russian intelligence sphere,” the party leadership continues the campaign against the SD couple.
On Friday, Social Democrat deputy group leader Anders Ygeman sent a new letter to Speaker of Parliament Andreas Norlén, referring to the fact that Gustav Gellerbrant is now back at work after his parental leave.
In the letter, Ygeman again designates both Gellerbrant and his partner as a possible security risk. He claims, among other things, that the partner, through her work as political secretary for SD in the Constitutional Committee, could have access to sensitive or secret information.
The statement about security risks thus comes from the same Anders Ygeman who, in the summer of 2017, was forced to resign as Interior Minister after the IT scandal at the Swedish Transport Agency, one of the biggest security leaks in modern Swedish history.
Already in January 2016, the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) had informed Ygeman that foreign IT technicians without security clearance had accessed secret Swedish registers. Nevertheless, Ygeman was silent for a year and a half without informing either Prime Minister Stefan Löfven or the parliament, which eventually forced him out of the government.
Ygeman demands written answers from the Speaker as to whether the Parliamentary Administration has taken any special security measures regarding the couple and if any special assessment has been made of the security risks possibly associated with their continued work in parliament.
– Ultimately, it’s about Sweden’s security, says security scandal’s Anders Ygeman to Expressen.