2025-11-05 07:17:00
Prosecutors on Tuesday called for jail terms of four-and-a-half years for three men on trial in Sweden, accused of assaulting immigrants in a case that has revealed the growing trend of white supremacists banding together in fitness clubs.
The defendants, all in their 20s, were members of an “Active Club” – loosely structured groups that meet in gyms and aim to promote white nationalist ideology and misogynistic theories.
The trio is accused of beating up immigrants in central Stockholm just after midnight on August 27.
“People of foreign origin were chosen at random” to be attacked, and several of the accused “made Nazi salutes that were caught on surveillance cameras”, prosecutor Gustav Andersson told the Stockholm district court.
The victims said in testimony how they had been beset with anxiety in the wake of the attacks. One said he felt “intense hatred” as he was assaulted.
“It was as if these people knew what they were doing, that they were practising kickboxing or something similar, that they were training to injure,” one of the victims tearfully told the court on the first day of the trial.
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Swedish media reported the prosecution had requested a more lenient sentence for a fourth man also on trial, who was not present during the third assault.
Prosecutors said the four men first hit a black man in the face with an umbrella while shouting racial slurs, then attacked a man of Syrian origin, knocking him to the ground and kicking him in the head until he lost consciousness.
Three of the suspects then beat a man on a subway train, prosecutors said.
The accused deny the charges against them, save for the final assault, which was caught on security cameras, and claim they were acting in self-defence.
No date has so far been set for a verdict.
Active Club members “hope to regain their masculinity by way of violence, improving their physical fitness and building a strong fraternity with other men who support each other”, according to a document published by the Swedish Centre for Preventing Violent Extremism.
They are encouraged to use violence outside the gym against targets including immigrants, feminists, Jews and the LGBTQ community, according to the Swedish anti-racism watchdog Expo.
Sweden’s intelligence service Säpo has warned of the risk of radicalisation of young men attracted by violence and far-right groups.
