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Claes Borgström: 'I feel deeply violated'

The man behind Sweden's two biggest judicial scandals in history had his feelings hurt.


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STOCKHOLM'S DUCKPOND (Rixstep) — The Swedish citizenry are finally reacting to Claes Borgström. They've had enough. It's not just the way he contributed to the enormous 'Quick' judicial scandal - it's the way he personally engineered the persecution of Julian Assange.

Condemnation is at a fever pitch.

The Quick Scandal

The 'Quick scandal' - regarded as the biggest travesty of Swedish justice in history before the 'Assange scandal' - involves Claes Borgström in a very incriminating way. Claes Borgström was the attorney who let his client be convicted of eight murders he didn't commit, who left the families of the eight victims in the lurch, and who raked in a cool USD half million with fairytale invoices to the Swedish courts.

The posthumous publication of Hannes Råstam's book 'Thomas Quick - Creating a Serial Killer' a few weeks back is still having repercussions in the duckpond. But as Aftonbladet columnist Jan Guillou points out, the other culprits know better than to make a fuss. It's only the periodically hammered Claes Borgström and his good friend Göran Lambertz who lost their heads.

Lambertz - a former attorney general who famously stated in 2006 that he'd reviewed all the documents in the Quick cases and concluded the investigations were carried out correctly, and who today somehow sits as a supreme court justice - was the first of the two to screw up. He came out and declared he had new evidence that Quick actually was guilty.

This was unfortunate for Lambertz, for the courts that reviewed the reopened cases had already taken the same matters into consideration and found tangible evidence to debunk them.

Next out was good old Claes Borgström, who now claimed he had 'secret evidence' in the Quick cases that he'd withheld from the courts (both during the trials and now when the cases were reopened) that he still wasn't going to divulge.

And it's about now the general Swedish populace begin to laugh at him.

The Assange Scandal

Claes Borgström is the common denominator in both the Quick scandal and the Assange scandal - Sweden's biggest judicial travesties in history. (And that's really something, considering the competition - da Costa and the like.) Aftonbladet columnist Jan Guillou thinks Claes Borgström is a joke. And on 26 August this year wrote a column to that effect.

Covering only the former case, Guillou said in effect that not only were Borgström and Lambertz implicated up to their ears, but their desperation to save face was only making things worse.

'I feel deeply violated'

Cut to today. When the periodically hammered Borgström gets a chance to reply in the same rag. 'I feel deeply violated', writes the legal counsel of Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén. He writes that he's been 'smeared and spat on'.

But no one feels any sympathy for Borgström anymore. Withhold evidence from several courts? Say not a word as eight trials are derailed? Personally engineer the persecution of Julian Assange? Nope. The Swedish people won't have it anymore.

Borgström's the one who wrote to the prosecution authority, requesting the Assange case be reopened. He's the one who claimed his two 'clients' had testified 'each on their own and independently'. He's the one who insisted he be appointed their legal counsel because of the persecution in the media, this despite the fact that the identity of the one still wasn't known and the identity of the other was discovered only a day earlier.

Reader Comments

Reader comments on Borgström's sob story have been universally damning. Here are a few of the best.

The only people who have the right to feel violated in this mess are the relatives of the victims whose murderers are still at large.
 - Bibi Andersson

And Johan's mother said in the studio that when she met Borgström, he wouldn't even say hello, after all the hours they'd spent together in the courtroom. Bad conscience? YES!
 - Claes Friberg

Yes Borgström can cry his eyes out and feel violated, but one has to wonder how everyone else he's hurt in his ambitious career feels. Just think for a second how he's hurt Assange.
 - Carlinge Wisberg

Claes you sicko, passing the buck for helping to ruin Quick's life, and now trying to ruin the life of Julian Assange. Claes is one of the filthiest public figures in Sweden.
 - Peter Widen

Claes Borgström - you're going to have a rough time now. One million Swedish women feel they've been raped!
 - Erik Silfvertelning

That was silly of Borgström. That was sick.
 - Dan Kotka

My advice to you, Borgström? Retire and stop practicing law. Your excuses are only pathetic drivel. You've helped eight murderers stay free. You don't have much to be proud of. It's no news that idiots confess to murder all the time - at least 200 have confessed to the murder of Palme. But what bothers me the most is that you don't want to see what everyone else sees - that this is the biggest judicial scandal in Sweden in hundreds of years.
 - Per Arthur Michael Odengard

Sniff sniff! Go to Jail, go directly to Jail, do not pass Go - and stay there!
 - Claes Friberg

Borgström should be sitting in detention until his trial, not writing sob stories for Aftonbladet.
 - Daniel Klasson

Now Claes Borgström's the victim, he feels 'violated' and 'spat on'. I wonder if he knows how Thomas Quick feels, the man he 'defended' and together with van der Kwast, Pentinnen, and Lambertz destroyed. Or if he knows how Assange feels today after all his attacks in the media?
 - Ernest Curiel


Perhaps it was Flashback's 'duqu' who nailed it best.

Stop the presses! A new sob story signed by vodka solicitor Borgström who is deeply upset about Guillou's article about him - now we can say 'congrats' to Borgström. So you get to drink your lunch at the Radisson hotel again and invoice the district court another three hours work - use Ardin's account this time!

See Also
Red Hat Diaries: Borgström & Quick
Red Hat Diaries: The Claes Borgström Interview
Red Hat Diaries: Julian Assange & Claes Borgström
The Technological: Borgström: 'I Know Things Too!'
Industry Watch: Claes Borgström - Defence Attorney?

Aftonbladet: Claes Borgström: 'Jag känner mig djupt kränkt'
Aftonbladet: Desperata försök att rädda äran från skandalens smuts

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