There is a lack of information in the chat that the police have secured, where Malmö FF's team captain Pontus Jansson appears to have made laughing emojis after anti-Semitic slogans, reports Sydsvenskan.
It was on Monday that information emerged that there were missing posts from the chat in the investigation.
Now, prosecutor Henrik Nordquist confirms:
The group chat appears in an investigation into a hooligan brawl in Stockholm last year. On Monday, charges were brought against 12 people for violent rioting.
In the chat, one of the accused expresses himself grossly anti-Semitically, and Jansson, who is not suspected of a crime, according to the investigation, responds with four laughing emojis. But in that very text part, messages have disappeared, confirms the prosecutor.
Pontus Jansson's reaction may have been something entirely different.
He cannot explain how the messages disappeared. Lawyer Max Ahlgren, who represents Jansson, calls the handling "catastrophically bad" for Sydsvenskan, and thinks the prosecutor should apologize.
Pontus Jansson has written in an Instagram post that he joined the group in 2022, when he played in England, but should have left the group earlier.
"My purpose for joining the chat group was to help Malmö FF get support in adversity through continued positive fan culture", he writes.
In an interview on MFF's website, he says that parts of the chat group are friends he has known for many years, but he takes distance from "the jargon".
The former national team player informed MFF himself before the charges were made public. He was benched in the match against Brommapojkarna (2-2) last weekend and the club launched an internal investigation.
