In the spring of 2022, two of SVT Nyheter’s journalists were dispatched to film a feature outside the police station in Rinkeby. One was outside filming, while the other sat in an SVT-marked car and waited.
Seven police officers intervened, took away the filming journalist and confiscated the camera.
JO has examined surveillance footage from the scene and notes that the police, despite the journalist showing a press ID and pointing out the colleague in the company car, detained the journalists for approximately ten minutes.
Scorching criticism
“I cannot draw any other conclusion from the films and what has otherwise emerged in the case than that it must have been clear after a short while that AA and BB were journalists from SVT and that they were filming for an SVT feature. The intervention would then have been immediately canceled and the camera returned to BB. However, this did not happen.”
Police officers must always know what legal conditions exist for an intervention. Whether the police believed they had support in the law, however, cannot be ascertained, as there is no documentation from the intervention, something that also receives stinging criticism.
“Of course completely unacceptable”
“Furthermore, the lack of documentation can be perceived as the officials involved wanting to hide the wrongful intervention. If it was that way, it is of course completely unacceptable.”
JO writes that the journalists were hindered in their work and that the freedom of acquisition, which is protected in the Freedom of the Press Ordinance and the freedom of expression, was violated.
“The police authority is criticized for the intervention against the journalists and for the fact that the measures were not documented. The intervention meant that the constitutional freedom of procurement was violated. I take the incident seriously.”