The 20-year-old man had been banned from entering Swedish sports events due to misconduct.
Despite the ban, he attended AIK matches in Allsvenskan on at least two occasions. During the Stockholm derby against Hammarby in August last year, he was active in the fight that broke out in the stands – and was convicted last week for, among other things, violent rioting and violation of the law on access bans.
According to AIK's head of security Henrik Koch, it is difficult to identify and stop people from attending the matches.
"We have a lot of entrances, we are not allowed to hand out pictures of those who have access bans and we do not have the systems to be able to check identification today. In other words, it's pretty easy to get in here anyway," he says.
According to the police, 149 access bans linked to football events were issued in 2022. At present, 65 are active.
Introduced exclusion strategy
A few years ago, Swedish football abandoned the so-called conditional stairway, which was criticized for focusing on collective punishment. Instead, the so-called exclusion strategy was introduced – which means that individuals who commit crimes or violate rules of order must be identified and prosecuted, or suffer other sanctions such as organizer suspensions.
"Both we and the supporters were probably pretty much in agreement that we wanted individuals to take punishment for their actions. We suspend people, we report all crimes that take place inside the arena to the police, we do what we are able to do, says Henrik Koch.