Nazi student fined for inciting racial violence

A university doctoral student who arranged a lecture by a leading Swedish Nazi has been fined by the courts.

Karolina Matti, a student at the University of Umea, was fined the equivalent of Pounds 230, while Dan Berner, a member of the Nazi network Nordland, was sentenced to a month's jail for inciting violent agitation towards an ethnic group during a lecture he held at the university in December 1997.

Ms Matti was accused of complicity in the incitement. Both had pleaded not guilty, citing Sweden's freedom of speech rights.

Ms Matti's fines were set at a proportion of her daily income and the sentence was suspended. Ms Matti, who was conducting research into Nazism in Sweden at the time of the lecture, has said that she will appeal. There are no reports that Berner will appeal.

His jail sentence can probably be regarded as light, as the case is in the grey zone between rights of free speech and political opinion, university research, and Nazi propaganda.