Sweden’s Foreign Minister in legal trouble for blog comments

[Republished post, the original must have been accidentally deleted. Sorry for the inconvenience]

The blog of Sweden’s Foreign Minster Carl Bildt has become a question for Konstitutionsutskottet (KU), the Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution, writes Riksdag & Departement. Bildt’s blog is subject to an investigation by the prosecutor because Bildt did not remove hateful comments to some of his blog posts earlier this year. And before the prosecutor continues with the preliminary investigation, he wants KU to determine whether Bildt is blogging as a minister or as a private individual. If he is blogging as a minister, then KU will determine if he is to be prosecuted or not.

According to Swedish law it is the responsibility of the site owner to remove hateful comments “within reasonable time”. Bildt has declared that he knew about the comments and that he found them “very inappropriate”. But he did not remove them with the explanation that they were archived anyway. The comments were finally removed later in the spring.

Initially the blog was launched as a private blog, but when Bildt became a minister in the new right wing goverment he added a link to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ website which also registers all the posts on the blog as public documents.

During the 200 years that KU has existed it has only decided to prosecute a minister once, and that was in the 1850’s.

Tags: , , , , . Ping.