In the first week after the beheading of a Danish woman, I was the only journalist who wrote about the beheading of this young woman on holiday in Morocco. As a reward for exposing the truth I now have a suspended jail sentence.
My lawyer and I are going to apply for the European Court of Human Rights to try this Danish free speech- case of mine.
This case has already indirectly cost me DKK 38.000 in legal fees – I just got the news that I now have to pay another DKK 39.700 because my suspended jail sentence is not going to be tried in the highest court in Denmark, and this amount is the legal costs of the trials.
The first legal fee was due to the Danish state threatening my daughter. The charge against me resulted in social authorities threatening to remove my then foster daughter from us. We hired a lawyer and our girl is now happily adopted, and was luckily never removed from us.
The terrorist attack happened in Morocco in 2018. I shared the link as a part of my work as a then blogger and citizen journalist, I did this because the Danish legacy (mainstream) media did not tell the Danish public about the beheadings of two women, a Danish and Norwegian woman, Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland, on holiday in Morocco.
I was the only journalist who (on a national news platform), for the whole following week, on my blog at the time on Jyllands Posten, wrote about the beheading of a Danish and a Norwegian woman. That week, the Danish media in over 1400 articles described the women, mostly with words like: “died with signs of violence” and / or “with injuries to the neck from a sharp object”. Both women were found decapitated by their tent, on holiday in Morocco.
The charge, indictment and verdicts have assumed that the images in the terrorist video are private images, and that I have shared those pictures – even though I only shared a link to a warning about the video. Their case against me is that terrorism, in this case, is a private matter. The video showed a private moment of death. But that is simply not true – especially not when the truth was not told to the public. I could even accept that the police removed the video from the internet, due to the privacy of the women – if only the authorities and the media would’ve told us the truth about this horrendous terrorist attack.
This case is of great importance for free speech in Denmark. Also for legacy (mainstream) journalists and media.
You don’t have to agree with me on anything to think that I shouldn’t be punished – with a suspended prison sentence – for revealing the truth, or for having shared a link to a terrorist video – with content that has the public interest.
The only reason why I even watched the video, and then shared a link to it, was to investigate yet another case where the media were not telling us the whole truth about Islamic terrorism. As a surviver of Islamic terrorism, I was furious. If I hadn’t seen the video – and shared it, I might have been accused of making up the beheadings of the women. My only proof or documentation of this heinous crime was the video. I only shared the link after trying to call out other journalists on social media for not telling the public the truth. Before I shared the link to the video I was accused, by Danish journalists for spreading conspiracies.
I see my role as a political activist, blogger or citizen journalist – not as an investigative journalist – but because the news are no longer objective – I also have to investigate, research and verify stories that are not being told.
A link will be available when the crowdfunding has been approved by the Danish state.
