Swedish socialist journalists face 18 years in prison

[aty]

Swedish leftist journalists Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye working for among others the anarcho-syndicalist newspaper "Arbetaren" have been sentenced for terrorist-crimes in Ethiopia after investigating the genocide made by Ethiopia and the swedish oil company Lundin Oil.

Swedens foreign minister Carl Bildt is a former board member of Lundin Oil and have a lot invested in the company. And he have been very reluctant to do anything to help them. In fact Carl Bildt is under investigation himself of crimes against humanity because of Lundin Oil taking part in the genocide.

Two days before the journalists were going to Ethiopia they suddenly saw that Lundin Oil had visited their blog. And when entering the occupied Ogaden togheter with the guerilla-group ONLF they were arrested after a shootout. They were both hit in the arms.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16283332
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...orism-ethiopia

https://www.facebook.com/freejohanandmartin

[aty]

The sentence will be handed out 27th december and will be minimum 11 years and maximum 18 years.

[svenne]

It's pretty fucked up. Around 80 % of the media in Sweden is owned by the political right, and seems to be more interested in writing about our finance minister in words that would have made Kim Jong-Il proud, rather than criticize Carl Bildt. But the journalists are pretty pissed about it. Martin Schibbye has, as far as i know, a background in RKU (Revolutionary Communist Youth), and once wrote positively about the nepali maoists in Arbetaren..

[X5N]

Oh dear. I guess Sweden isn't as much of a transparent and un-corrupt paradise as I thought. No offense intended to the people of Sweden, of course.

Well, there's still Iceland.

[GatesofLenin]

So report the truth = you go to jail? Nice world we living in!

[RedAtheist]

Just another reason why Sweden isn't socialist. I wish people would quit saying it is

[Prometeo liberado]

Absolute fuckin crime. anyone who wants to how well the nordic nations have refined their socialism to mesh with modern times should spend some time with the families of these two brave men.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Absolute fuckin crime. anyone who wants to how well the nordic nations have refined their socialism to mesh with modern times should spend some time with the families of these two brave men.

Come again? Every time I see one of those confused deluded persons suggesting there is some kind of socialism in Scandinavia I cringe. And they are everywhere in the United States it seems.

[Sleepflower]

Now, I've read several different articles on this in various mainstream newspapers, and, not once have I seen Carl Bildh or Lundin Oil mentioned. Not a single mention! All that has been written has been along the lines of "and the families are trying to cope... the outcome is uncertain..." No reason for why these journalists did what they did has been discussed in any of the ariticles I've read. Disgusting.

It is only the part of the story which is "clean" enough for the right wing government that is reported.

[Kkay]

Now, I've read several different articles on this in various mainstream newspapers, and, not once have I seen Carl Bildh or Lundin Oil mentioned. Not a single mention! All that has been written has been along the lines of "and the families are trying to cope... the outcome is uncertain..." No reason for why these journalists did what they did has been discussed in any of the ariticles I've read. Disgusting.

It is only the part of the story which is "clean" enough for the right wing government that is reported.

I know, i mean i live in sweden and i consider myself to be quite knowing of stuff that happens here, i read alot of newspapers and stuff. But not until now i understood what this really is about. What Bildt has got to do with Lundin Oil havent been mentioned a single time... All they say is that Persson and Schibbye got into the country illegaly and all that stuff.

[aty]

Read this for background story and our foreign ministers involvement:
http://www.thelocal.se/38102/20111222/

Carl Bildt is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and was primeminister 1991-1994 in Sweden.

'Lundin may have led Bildt to the heart of darkness'

After two Swedish journalists claiming they were investigating the presence of the Lundin Group in Ethiopia were found guilty of terror crimes on Wednesday, Swedish investigative journalist Leo Lagercrantz takes a closer look at the Swedish company and foreign minister Carl Bildt's involvement with it.

On July 1st of this year, Swedish journalists Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye were arrested after having ventured into the disputed Ogaden Province in eastern Ethiopia in the company of soldiers from the ONLF guerrillas.

They were found guilty of terror crimes by an Ethiopian court on Wednesday.

The story of the Swedes is more than business as usual, for the Ethiopian regime and for the Swedish government.

The affair has once again put the spotlight on Carl Bildt's previous involvement in the mining and oil group, The Lundin Group - founded by the now deceased, controversial Adolf H. Lundin - and listed on the Stockholm and Toronto stock exchanges.

This time it's about Carl Bildt sitting on the board and being involved in negotiating the agreement between Lundin Petroleum and the Ethiopian regime in Addis Ababa.

And it was precisely the Lundin Group's presence and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in connection with the establishment of the deal that the Swedish journalists wanted to investigate.

When it became known that the Swedes had been arrested Carl Bildt commented: "It's an area we have been advised against traveling to because it is a dangerous area."

The foreign minister's statement has caused concern and anger among Schibbye and Persson's fellow journalists, and many Swedish publishers are today asking the question: Whose interests does Carl Bildt represent - the captured Swedish citizens’ or the Ethiopian regime?

Or perhaps his own?

And Sweden's largest newspaper, Aftonbladet, is campaigning on its cultural pages for his resignation.

The suspicion has not exactly diminished after Göteborgs-Posten (GP) got an interview with the head of Africa Oil in Addis Abeba, James Phillips, where he claims that he had a close cooperation with the former Swedish ambassador to Ethiopia, Staffan Tillander, and that Africa Oil and the Swedish ambassador on a regular basis exchanged “security info” and travelled in Ogaden together.

This leads to the conclusion that it's OK for Swedish companies with questionable reputations to be in Ogaden, but for Swedish journalists investigating crimes against humanity, it is not.

But the Ethiopian affair is just one of several that are haunting the Swedish foreign minister after his seven years in the Lundin sphere.

Let us go back ten years to the year 2000. It was the year that the former prime minister (1991-1994) and EU envoy to the Balkans (1995) joined the Lundin Petroleum's board of directors.

The seven years with the Lundin Group that followed would make Carl Bildt a wealthy man. But at what price?

His time as a “Lundin man” follows him like a dark shadow that he can’t shake.

This is because The Lundin Group is not just any other listed company.

The founder, the Swedish rock engineer and oil and gas magnate Adolf H. Lundin, made a fortune back in the 1970s when he came across huge natural gas fields in Qatar.

However, the company attracted international attention the first time in 1984, when, despite the UN boycott, it mined gold in South Africa. Adolf H. Lundin, however, couldn’t be bothered with the criticism: "I do not understand the Swedish rage against this beautiful country," he told the Swedish newspaper Expressen.

The next storm of criticism came in 1996. This time, after The Lundin Group was blacklisted by the United Nations who believed that the company had plundered the Congo for its assets.

Today, the Lundin sphere is the second largest owner of the Tenke Fungurume facility (ownership amounts to 24.5 percent) but the mine continues to be the subject of criticism from NGOs.

Among other things, the Lundin sphere and the other owners have been criticized for having displaced people who today are forced to live under canvas, although they were promised decent housing.

After the deals in the Congo, the Lundin ravage there has been compared to the ruthless imperialism in Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness" in the Swedish media.

So who then was Adolf H. Lundin (1938 - 2006)? A modern variant of the ivory collector Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novel, or a charming Indiana Jones type?

Bildt, who wrote Lundin's obituary, described him like this:

"Adolf is a true global entrepreneur of a species that unfortunately we hardly have in Sweden."

The descriptions of Adolf H. Lundin as 100 percent contractor is substantiated by his own description of himself:

"We work without regard to political risks. (...) The only thing that is important to us is that what we are looking for can be something big.”

But for those who read the authorized biography written by journalist Robert Eriksson, now responsible at the company for Investor Relations in Europe, a different picture is presented of the tycoon who built up the Lundin empire: Adolf H. Lundin did indeed have political passion.

He was an ardent anti-Communist who was involved in the Washington, DC-based conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation.

Adolf H. Lundin sponsored Ronald Reagan's election campaign; in return, he and his wife Eva were invited to the Reagent inauguration in 1981. The program included a show with Frank Sinatra that the couple watched from the front row.

So what was Adolf H. Lundin’s position towards doing business with communist countries?

He answered author Robert Eriksson like this:

"I would not have dreamed of doing business with Soviet Communist politicians."

When it came to the German Nazis, however, the answer is different:

"That I certainly would have done. There was no one who knew what really happened there until very late, at the end of World War II."

Among all of the controversial projects that Adolf H. Lundin initiated, there is one which even today - five years after Adolf H. Lundin's death – continues to drain the company and the Swedish foreign minister's trust capital: Sudan.

Since the summer of 2010 there has been an ongoing criminal investigation by the International Public Prosecution Office in Stockholm concerning Lundin Petroleum's operations in Sudan.

When Carl Bildt in 2000 agreed to become a member of the board of the Lundin Group, the company had already been active there for three years. Human rights groups were early to assert that the government bombed villages and killed and expelled the local population in the province of Unity State (also called the Western Upper Nile), so that Lundin Petroleum could prospect for oil undisturbed.

But as usual, when accused of unethical business, the company was unresponsive to criticism. When Carl Bildt was questioned in the Riksdag's Constitutional Committee in April 2007 (this time about his options in the Lundin company Vostok Nafta, all of whose assets were in Russian Gazprom) he rejected the criticism, countering that his commitment has contributed to peace in the region.

When after the hearing in the constitutional committee, reporters pressed Carl Bildt it ended as it often does with the Swedish foreign minister: he berated them, pushed on factual errors, often petty, in the questions - and got laughs and sympathy on his side.

After the hearing in the constitutional committee he appeared in the Swedish media more as a hero of peace in Sudan, rather than a dubious businessman.

And he has continued to be one of the Reinfeldt government’s most popular ministers. The criticism of him and his commitment to The Lundin Group has been brushed aside as "leftist propaganda.”

However, lately support for Carl Bildt has begun to fade.

His arrogant attitude to the case of the Swedish journalist Dawit Isaak, who has been imprisoned for 10 years in Eritrea without trial, has created discontent among Swedish journalists. His unwillingness to criticize first Iran (where Lundin has been active through its subsidiary Lundin Munir) and then Qaddafi, whose regime the Lundin Group long had close relations with, has disappointed many of his former supporters.

While the majority of the world’s democratic leaders condemned Qhaddafi when he attacked demonstrators with fighter jets, Bildt took another position.

“It has nothing to do with supporting one or the other, it has to do with obtaining stability and a reasonable development,” he said.

Yet again the question needed to be raised: Did the Swedish foreign minister’s peculiar, tactful attitude towards crimes against humanity have any connection with his time as a Lundin board member?

His veto recently against EU-sanctions against Syria – called “The Ericsson factor” because of Swedish pundits' analysis that he voted against full sanctions to protect the Swedish telecom company’s interests – has also created amazement.

And now, on Wednesday, two Swedish journalists were found guilty of terror crimes by an Ethiopian court.

Lundin Petroleum first established itself in Ethiopia in 2006. The situation in Somali Ethiopia, as the area is also called, was difficult even before Lundin started looking for gas and oil there. Security consultants warned Lundin against establishing operations in the Ogaden - but in vain.

The company signed a contract with the Ethiopian regime.

And in connection with the establishment, the government took the opportunity to "clean up" so that no one or anything could interfere with the exploitation.

That they wanted to get rid of various rebel groups and warring tribes is not surprising, but the allegations of the methods used are familiar ones when it comes to how the Lundin Group does business in Africa: burned villages, people displacement, and systematic rape.

That is at least what human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and other experts claim. But the documentation of the regime's abuses in Somali Ethiopia is far from satisfactory.

The regime has effectively isolated the area, and to visit it unlawfully is considered a terrorist crime.

This means that the army can feel safe – it's not possible to produce any evidence that could lead to prosecution in The Hague.

But multinationals in place there, such as the Swedish Lundin Group (Lundin Petroleum's operations were taken over by African Oil, in which they still have a strong interest) have had little to fear.

The same applies to political socialites such as Carl Bildt.

The Lundin Group's business in Ethiopia has received little media exposure.

Until now.

And while the criticism of Bildt's handling of the Ethiopia-Swedes is growing in strength, there is also a preliminary investigation which should may also cause the foreign minister to lose sleep: the International Public Prosecution Office in Stockholm's investigation of crimes against humanity in Sudan 1997-2003.

No one yet has been informed they are under suspicion, and the prosecutor, Magnus Elving, has not even mentioned that it is Lundin Oil currently under investigation.

But he confirmed that the investigation started because of a report by a human rights organization that explicitly criticized this particular company.

When I talk with Magnus Elving he says:

"So far we have devoted ourselves to gathering documentation. Now we are beginning to approach the stage where it becomes necessary to call in [people] for questioning."

Prosecutor Elving is optimistic: "The investigation will take at least another year, but we will not give up so easily."

Adolf H. Lundin died in 2006 and today the group is led by sons Lukas and Ian Lundin.

They have invested considerable resources in re-profiling the Group and making it more socially acceptable. They have started a philanthropic operation - Lundin for Africa, and have also donated $100 million to the Clinton Foundation.

In a business context, The Lundin Group has made headlines recently for having made a giant oil discovery in the North Sea that caused its shares to shoot up.

Despite happy charities and investors, questions about what really happened when Lundin Petroleum established itself in Somali Ethiopia have not disappeared.

Recently, when The Lundin Group was discussed at a conference on conflict minerals at Clark University in Worcester Massachusetts, a participant commented:

"Was it the Lundin family that Stieg Larsson had in mind when he drew his portrait of capitalists?"

Leo Lagercrantz is an award winning investigative journalist and former editor of the opinion pages at the Swedish tabloid Expressen.

[Tim Cornelis]

^^People are saying this shows that Sweden is corrupt, etc. But they were jailed in Ethiopia, and the Swedish prime minister called for their release. So it's a little more nuanced than that.

[Luís Henrique]

Absolute fuckin crime. anyone who wants to how well the nordic nations have refined their socialism to mesh with modern times should spend some time with the families of these two brave men.

What socialism?

Sweden is a capitalist country like any other.

Luís Henrique

[aty]

^^People are saying this shows that Sweden is corrupt, etc. But they were jailed in Ethiopia, and the Swedish prime minister called for their release. So it's a little more nuanced than that.

No, it is not.

Carl Bildt first said when they were arrested that "they should not have been in such dangerous areas". Of course they have to change their tone, but the only thing Bildt is saying is "we are doing some quiet diplomacy". And at the same time Swedens ambassador is taking car trips togheter with officials from Ethiopia and Lundin Oil in occupied Ogaden.

And he have lied about him not taking part in decisions by Lundin Oil in Ethiopia. He said on a tv-show that Lundin Oil not even had any business in Ethiopia, but he forgot to mention that it is Lundin Oils daughter-company "Africa Oil" that officialy do business there.

It is so corrupt that it possibly could be. It is exactly like in the movie "shooter" with Matt Damon when he takes out some politicians and oil-barons that supports genocide for oil.

[aty]

Statement from ONLF:

ONLF – Clarifying Ethiopian False claims against The Swedish Journalists illegally detained

The Ethiopian regime of Meles Zenawei is going to charge Matin Schibbye and Johan Perrson tomorrow in A Kangaroo Court in Addis Ababa on a trumpeted charge of Terrorism. The regime has set up an elaborate program of manufacturing false and concocted ‘evidence’ after their ill-trained solders in Ogaden shot the unarmed Journalists in Ogaden. First they falsely claimed that they had captured two ONLF liberation Army members, in order to say later they have witnesses from ONLF to testify against the Journalists. No ONLF Liberation Army soldiers or members were captured with the two journalists, but since Ethiopia has succeeded in deluding even the UN Somalia Monitoring Group, who interviewed and used as evidence against Eritrea, tortured inmates in Jail ogaden, the Ethiopian regime is planning the same tactic in using poor victims in Jail ogaden to testify against the journalists.
Secondly, they manufactured a ‘video’ doctored with a few additions from the journalists personal souvenir clips and forced the journalists, in violation of the Geneva conventions, to implicate themselves. Furthermore, the regime claimed that the journalists were trained by ONLF fighter in Galkayo- Somalia to use small arms. No ONLF member is safe in Puntland, let alone having training camp there. It is on record that even civilians from Ogaden are harassed and forcefully sent back to Ethiopian security. Therefore, the claim that ONLF trained the Journalists is a baseless, cheap and pathetic attempt to hide a heinous crime committed by the Ethiopian Army. Actually, this is a clear proof to the world about culture and webs of lie this regime engages in in denying the rights of the Ogaden and Ethiopian peoples.
The Ethiopian government is greatly threatened specifically by these two journalists because it was afraid they will uncover the scorched earth policy and genocide it committed in Ogaden in order to clear the land for oil companies such as Lundin, which has now re-invented itself as African Oil, PETRONAS and others, in whose name hundreds of thousands of Ogaden Somalis were either displaced, killed or starved.
The Ethiopian government is systematically violating the Human, Economic, political and Humanitarian Rights of the Ogaden people. It is committing genocide in Ogaden by denying the people the right to life by blockading aid and trade against specific clans in Ogaden. Furthermore, ONLF was part of the government, during the transitional period in Ethiopia, but the regime denying ONLF the opportunity to pursue peacefully the right of the Ogaden people to self-determination by attacking ONLF and destroying the democratically elected Ogaden parliament in 1994. Hence, ONLF is fighting a defensive war that has been imposed on It by the Zenawi regime and has called on many occasions for an internationally mediated settlement of the Ogaden issue. Instead, Ethiopia refused all attempts by the international community to mediate and as such, the Ethiopian claim that ONLF is a terrorist organisation has no legal or moral basis. If the right of people to defend themselves from unjust rule is terrorism, Meles Zenawi himself and the TPLF would qualify for terrorism and all liberation movements including those that liberated USA and most of the African countries from colonialism and oppression would qualify as terrorists.
Finally, ONLF calls upon all people with conscience to condemn Ethiopian government mockery of justice and stand up for both the Journalists imprisoned and humiliated in Ethiopia and the voiceless multitudes in Ogaden and Ethiopia.
Ogaden National Liberation Front

http://onlf.org/?p=267

[aty]

They got 11 years in prison today...

[Red Future]

They got 11 years in prison today...

This just makes me dislike the EPRDF Goverment in Ethiopia even more .Its a joke of a social democratic party.

[Ocean Seal]

Isn't this the same country that gives its murderers 21 years in prison?

[Tovarisch]

They got 11 years in prison today...

That is fucking stupid. I really hope the Swedish government at least tries to intervene

[Tavarisch_Mike]

It's strange, considering that Sweden have been a verry big aid giver to Ethiopia for many decades now, that our goverment doesn't use that position for more strong demands. Something is wron *cough* Bildt...