Are the Sweden Democrats celebrating the terror attack of Anders Behring Breivik? That's what 'deaconess' Anna Ardin claimed in a Facebook post on the anniversary of the atrocity. Ardin later removed her post.
Ardin, a deaconess and board member of the Social Democrat Party, wrote:
'Today nazis and Sweden Democrats are celebrating one of the worst attacks on democracy since the second world war - the murder of people like me on Utøya.'
The post was immediately attacked. Well-known investigative journalist Rebecca Uvell writes:
'This Social Democrat Anna Ardin. Who from her group has been assisting the Muslim Brotherhood in Sweden. She writes terrible things. She thinks a lot of people online want to see seventy children slaughtered? Ardin is trampling on their graves. A new nadir. Shame!'
Louise Löfquist writes:
'Evidently 17% of Swedes are 'celebrating' the terror attack on Utøya. One can't be more tasteless than that. Anna Ardin should be shamed, but we know she won't be. Disgusting.'
Malin Lundgren writes:
'The person who wrote this is mentally ill. How can the Social Democrats be represented by someone like this?'
Ardin removed the post and instead published a new post where she writes 'That was stupid of me to write, only because some of you play video games where you shoot children on Utøya and laugh about it'.
She also followed up with a tweet.
'No, I didn't say that 1.2 million Swedes are celebrating Utøya. Some played Breivik, shot at members of the Social Democrat youth league in a computer game, and they laughed. I removed my private post on Facebook and I apologised for my statements. But the attacks on me continue.'
Ardin gained notoriety earlier when she claimed that Greta Thunberg is a 'prophet' who is 'on a par with the prophets of the bible'.
Anna Ardin later wrote to a Swedish news site:
'I have removed the post and I have apologised. It was a private post. It was not meant for public consumption. There seem to be many who want to share this post. So there are attacks on me. It angered many people who are screaming at me, who attack me personally, who hate, threaten, and spread gross exaggerations about the post I removed, which in turn generates even more hatred and threats - that's terrifying.'
On Friday 26 April of this year, Senior District Court Judge Robert E Payne appended the following to a ruling in the matter of Fitzgibbon v. Radack.
Neither contrition nor emotional distress nor illness nor financial difficulties can excuse deliberate misconduct of this sort by any litigant, much less by a lawyer. And, the record here shows that Radack is a sharp-tongued, mean-spirited, proliferous user of social media. Her conduct here is just more of the same. Neither contrition nor emotional distress nor illness nor financial distress have caused Radack to ameliorate her penchant for nasty social media communication.
The 'Radack' that Judge Payne is referring to is of course the well-known whistleblower attorney Jesselyn Radack.
In the autumn of 2015, mother-of-three Radack and father-of-three Fitzgibbon began making arrangements to meet at a hotel in the DC area. The meet was preceded by several seamy DMs sent by Radack to Fitzgibbon, and followed after the meet by further DMs by Radack to Fitzgibbon, complimenting him on the good time they'd had.
But things took an abrupt about-face some time later when Radack suddenly accused Fitzgibbon of rape for the same incident.
Prosecutors closed the investigation, and Fitzgibbon filed counterclaims against Radack, after which Radack began a series of evasive manoeuvres, all of which ultimately failed, and resulted in the ruling cited above.
Senior District Court Judge Payne also enjoined Radack in the same ruling to always make clear, whenever appearing before a court, that she has been found in contempt of court.
'The Court concludes that an appropriate punishment for violating the July 31, 2018 ORDER (ECF No. 41) is that Radack be held in contempt of Court for committing the violation so that, wherever she seeks to practice, she will have to report that she has been held in contempt of Court. That, for a lawyer, is an extremely serious punishment. Radack shall remit payment by May 30, 2019 to the Clerk of Court.'
Trevor Fitzgibbon was previously the media representative for, amongst others: Michael Ratner; Assange, Manning, and Snowden; Move On; Wikipedia; and the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador.