Mats Dagerlind, a Swedish publisher of the alt-media channel Samnytt, is sentenced by the Stockholm District Court to one month in prison and 2000 US dollars in damages for aggravated defamation of the Online Hate Inspector Tomas Åberg, a former policeman.
The defamation occurred in articles about Åberg, the founder of The Online Hate Inspector (Nathatsgranskaren.se). The defamed man himself pursued the process as a civil case.
According to the judgment, the man has been portrayed as a “criminal” as well as a generally “reprehensible person”.
The indictment initially included 13 counts, but 10 of these were not considered by a jury to be defamatory. The jury considered that three counts constituted defamation, which the District Court also considered.
Tomas Åberg – winner in most cases
Tomas Åberg has sued many people over the years, from an elderly wheelchair-bound retired person to Joakim Lamotte, a citizen journalist, all for defamation. Åberg won most of these cases.
Mats Dagerlind has denied the crime and said that the published information is not defamatory and that the publications were justifiable within the framework of criminal journalism coverage. He said Tomas Åberg is to be regarded as a public figure who must be able to withstand scrutiny.
“It is important to point out that, contrary to what the established media is reporting in the case, Samnytt has not singled out Åberg as reprehensible, but these are judgments made by others, which we have reported on in a news coverage context beyond our values,” says Mats Dagerlind.
Dagelind intends to appeal the judgment.
Tomas Åberg ran the tax-funded whistleblower organisation “Näthatsgranskaren” for several years. The business idea was to search social media for statements that could be reported under the “Hate speech” clause, and then he sued the people behind alleged “opinion crimes”. These were often elderly people who expressed themselves about criminal migrants in ways that the “Online Hate Inspector” exploited.
Animal neglect
The former police officer is known for neglecting yaks (Tartary ox) in a court case from 2013 when the Örebro County Administrative Board inspected the Jasiri farm. Åberg had three animals that died of starvation and dehydration in an enclosure at the farm. The autopsy showed that the yaks had starved to death. There was no food or water in the enclosure, writes Sydnärke Nytt.
Afterwards, he changed his name and left the country until the statute of limitations expired.
Tomas Åberg wanted to ban information about his background from being brought up in court in a previous court case. This is shown in documents from the Gothenburg District Court obtained by the newspaper Samnytt.
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- NewsVoice: Joakim Lamotte meets online hate critic Tomas Åberg in court