pic: traveller.com.au
Elin Ersson, the activist that stopped a plane from taking off in order to keep a man from being deported back to Afghanistan, was again convicted of breaking the law under the Aviation Act (luftfartslagen). As SvD’s legal commentator, Mårten Schulz, explains, someone who willfully or through gross negligence ignores the directions of an officer can be held responsible. The punishment for doing this, however, isn’t that much – about on par, Schulz says, with hopping the turnstile going into the subway. Ersson was fined 60 day-fines (dagsböter) for a total of 4200 kronor.
The Ersson case has had a couple twists and turns. Ersson boarded a plane in the summer of last year to stop the deportation of one man in particular, but it turned out that that particular man wasn’t on the flight. Another man, who Ersson didn’t know and whose case was unfamiliar to her, was on the plane being deported instead. Ersson decided to go through with her protest anyway, and refused to sit down so that the plane could taxi to takeoff. She was charged, and convicted last February, of not obeying the plane’s officers and sitting down.
However, in an investigation by Svenska Dagbladet, it came to light that one of the lay judges (nämndeman) in her case had called Ersson a criminal before the trial had even begun. Obviously, his judgement was totally compromised, and the trial had to be done over. (For more on the judicial process in Sweden, in particular about the Swedish system of lay judges, see this post.) The do-over trial has now been completed and the judgement remains the same: Ersson has again been found in breach of the Aviation Act.
The crime, however, is not actually in the Swedish penal code, and some commentators are making the argument that the verdict should be made more concrete than what is stated in the fuzzier Aviation Act (SvD.se/Ersson). Ersson’s sentence is based the judges’ understanding that while only the captain can make the decision that it is time to sit down and put your seatbelt on in preparation for takeoff, the cabin personnel in that case are acting as the messengers for the captain. Ersson claimed that she didn’t see the “put on your seatbelt” light, and that it was only the cabin personnel’s requests to do so. (The captain and the crew were not questioned in either trial.)
In addition, Ersson’s lawyer Thomas Fridh is also saying that not only didn’t she see the lamp, she never meant to break the law or to make a stand through civil disobedience – she was only protesting Swedish asylum policy. Thomas Fridh says that Ersson could not have foreseen how the law would be interpreted (Svd.se/Ersson2).
“We’re going to appeal” said Fridh. “If only to get some clarity on what the terms are if a similar action is under consideration” (Svd.se/Ersson2).
The cost for Ersson’s actions, according to the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, was around 240,000 kronor. Dagens Nyheter notes that both the man Ersson meant to save from deportation when she boarded the plane, and the man whose deportation Ersson ended up being arrested for by obstructing the plane’s operation, have since been deported.
Day-fines (dagsböter) are doled out as punishment for crimes that are more serious than speeding, but less serious than mandatory jail time. They’re factored by both the number of days and the income of the person being fined. 60 days isn’t that very long (dagsböter can go up to 150 days), and Ersson has little income – the court has leeway in setting an income marker and in this case set it at 70 kronor per day. 60 days, 70 kronor a day, makes 4200 kronor. Had Ersson had a much higher income, her fine would have been a lot higher, but could still have a length of 60 days. Day-fines are set in some European countries (Finland, Germany and Denmark, for example) but aren’t done in the US and only partially in the UK (thanks Wikipedia).