Swedish Foreign Minister slammed for website ‘lie’

Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds should resign for misleading journalists, say opposition parties. They say she did misled the public over how much she knew about her department’s contact with an internet hosting company that closed a website belonging to the Sweden Democrats. The forced closure of the Sweden Democrats’ site on February 9, after pictures of the prophet Muhammad had been published on it, was strongly criticised at the time. A foreign ministry official contacted the hosting company, Levonline, as did Sweden’s security police, S?po. Freivalds defended the foreign ministry’s contact with Levonline and said that it had simply been to inform the company of the consequences of publishing the pictures. At the same time, Freivalds denied that she had known of the contact in advance. That claim has now been contradicted in a statement sent by Carl Henrik Ehrenkrona, the head of the foreign ministry’s legal department, to the Chancellor of Justice, who is investigating whether the official was guilty of misconduct. ‘On February 8 an official in the department, after consultation with the foreign minister, contacted the company which hosted the website,’ wrote Ehrenkrona, according to the publication Riksdag & Departement. Swedish government bodies are banned in the constitution from getting involved in what newspapers, including web-based newspapers, write.