Politics and sensation are the engines to create a miscarriage of justice

Jan Guillou 2012-09-23

Which is the worst miscarriage of justice in modern Swedish legal history is not as easy to determine as some people think. Sure, Thomas Quick an unmatched record in the form of eight false murder convictions. But he played the course largely with the protagonist of the long comedy, or it was tragedy. Or actually both.

Unfortunately, it was too Enbom League, six innocent men who in 1952 was sentenced as Soviet spies without a shred of serious evidence. On the contrary retired prosecutor not to present obvious false evidence, wildly cheered on by journalists.

Nowadays, one can safely conclude that this was so, a substantial miscarriage of justice carried out mainly with political motives. Anyone who wants to understand the whole story, for example by reading the latest book on the subject: "Codename Mikael" by Tomas Bresky, Ordfront 2008th

Justice murder against Enbom League was based on politics more than anything else. When sentencing in Stockholm District Court July 31, 1952, Sweden was still in the aftermath of the shooting down of a Swedish spy plane and a reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea. In the lawsuit certainty perceived both court journalists it as a duty to combine efforts to get a conviction, whether the accused was guilty or not. Dagens Nyheter's senior crime reporter Massi Smith boasted even openly in his memoirs (1972) about how he was in the national interest lied in his journalism.

Politics in one form or another, is thus one powerful engine to be to produce a miscarriage of justice. The second is the sensation of a commercial nature.

As in the dual judicial murder and the prolonged persecution of Olle Moller, wrongly convicted of murder in 1939 and 1959 and under constant persecution from both the media that police were close to be there for another murder in 1955 and 1973.

Olle Moller was a famous person, eleven fold Swedish champion in running. And when Aftonbladet reporter Borje Heed lured him to "come forward" exploded publicity and journalists could then, with Borje Heed the lead, voluptuously lynch him in a great heap success. Last book on the subject is "The killer in people's home" by Lena Ebervall and Per E Samuelson, Piratförlaget 2012th

Styckmord history from 1984 onwards was driven by both political and sensationalist elements. The highly imaginative story of two doctors would have cut and eaten selected parts of a prostitute was very headline friendly.

From the beginning it was more sensational than politics, when Expressen reporter Leif Brännström created monster "coroner" who came to be seen as a modern Jack the Ripper. The policy came in later in the act when a social therapist named Hanna Olsson wrote a book in which she argued for a completely new and politicized form of evidence which would ensure gender power relations rather than old male evidence as witnesses and fingerprints and other obsolete.

She took the culture journalists by storm and soon there was not a cultural editor who knew everything about the child's ability to testify and obsolete bourgeois evidence. As an example of journalistic madness and lynching is styckmord story unique in its kind. The book about the whole story is equally remarkable that, "Death is a man" by Per Lindeberg, Fischer

In the 1980s, blossomed some supposedly feminist "science" that is now long afterwards, in a more sober time, inevitably brings to mind the 1600s witch trials.

Such a science was based on the notion of "repressed memories" that usually was raped during childhood. They raped the children alleged to repress such memories, which, however, could be induced by specific memory therapists (that's how it started with Thomas Quick, who had forgotten how he was forced to eat his little brother Simon, and therefore naturally have to compensate by becoming a serial killer). A related science, launched by Professor Eva Lundgren in Uppsala, was to map the network of satanic cannibals that swept across Sweden. This madness was reported by all media, in all seriousness. Heavily guarded, for example, police searching for 30 childrens' corpses, victims of a satanic orgy, outside Södertälje.

How many men were convicted innocent of raping children, who after memory therapy implication being raped, nobody knows specifically. There must be at least a dozen. Such a case could Hannes Råstam presenting convincing enough that the man would get erection and acquitted.

But behind him is an unknown number of men who were in prison
for crimes that were pure invention.

Maybe it's the latter that constitutes "the worst law scandal in modern times." As you can see there is plenty to choose from. And sadly enough, there is always a crucial factor behind the miscarriage of justice, that the media do not do their duty, or worse contribute as cheerleaders. 

Translated by paragraphs:
Source: http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/kolumnister/janguillou/article15488655.ab