Jan Axelsson is acquitted after being prosecuted for serious offenses against the law on responsibility for electronic bulletin boards.
It was a very expected verdict in my eyes. Flashback has built up a supervision of the forum based on the legislator's intentions. And then it would have been very strange if one had later found that it was criminal to act in that way, says Axelsson's lawyer Nils Hillert.
The prosecution covered twelve posts, of which the district court considers that eleven violate the law on incitement against a ethnic group. This includes, among other things, calls for violence, and insults such as "getknullare" and "pestsmitta" that were written in 2022 and 2023.
Flashback does not allow incitement against ethnic groups, but the posts have still remained on the forum for up to a year. According to the prosecutor, Jan Axelsson has made himself guilty of gross negligence when the messages remained for more than two weeks.
No negligence
The district court thinks that Axelsson could have prevented criminal posts better. But it is also noted that he has taken some measures, which is considered sufficient for him not to have shown "reprehensible signs of neglect or negligence".
"He can therefore not be considered to have been grossly negligent", it is written in the judgment.
The court also states that it has been practically impossible for Flashback's moderators to review all messages that are written.
"Extra carefully"
Jan Axelsson has denied the crime. In police interviews, he has pointed out that around 750,000 posts were deleted from Flashback by the site's approximately 100 moderators during the relevant period.
If someone had just reported the criminal posts, they would have disappeared immediately, Axelsson claims.
That's how we always handle incitement against ethnic groups, it's a rule that we handle extra carefully, he has said according to the preliminary investigation.
