In September 2020, the website Samnytt published the name and picture of a journalist on Dagens Nyheter, and wrote that the journalist enjoyed the "protection and favor" of terrorist organizations when he lived in Syria a few years earlier.
The site published the name and picture of the journalist and described him as "a suspected jihadist".
A year later, the newspaper's responsible publisher, Mats Dagerlind, was convicted of gross defamation in the district court, a verdict that was upheld by the Court of Appeal in June this year.
Dagerlind's lawyer appealed the verdict, which has now received leave to appeal in the Supreme Court.
The judgment states that the information that the journalist enjoyed the "protection and favor" of terrorist organizations must be interpreted as that he had contact with them, which Dagerlind's lawyer opposes.
In the appeal, he writes that the court made an interpretation that is not supported by the article, and that they did not accuse the journalist of anything, but only asked questions about what the journalist did in an area that was controlled by jihadist terrorist organizations.
Mats Dagerlind welcomes HD's trial.
- The article we wrote was proper investigative journalism, within the framework of freedom of expression and press.
The previous judgment feels like a total overrun of freedom of the press, he says.
Kulturnyheterna has also spoken to the DN journalist, who believes that the information in the article has caused him great harm.
He says he sees no reason why the Supreme Court should make a different assessment than the Court of Appeal.
- Samnytt's article is based on things that did not happen, on inaccuracies.
It is a low level of journalism, he says.