[ad_1]
In November last year, Chief Prosecutor Maria Sterup charged Peter Lundgren with sexual harassment or alternative harassment. The indictment concerned Expressen’s disclosure a week before the EU elections in May 2019 when we were able to post recorded phone conversations between then-EU MP Kristina Winberg and a fellow party member.
On Wednesday afternoon, the district court cleared Peter Lundgren of the sexual harassment allegations. In the ruling, the district court writes that it seems “very unclear and in that case how” Peter Lundgren touched the woman. It is also unclear, according to the district court, under what circumstances this should have happened.
The party partner recounted in recorded phone conversations how Lundgren took her by the breasts in a hotel room during the SD election conference in Nacka in March 2018.
In the conversations, the woman described to Winberg, who was also in the hotel room, how she reacted to the unwanted approach:
– Yes, he caught me with his legs. I panicked like this, I panicked
She also said:
– It was lucky that there were people in the room. What if I had been with him myself?
SD top admitted he took the woman by the breasts
When Expressen confronted Lundgren during an election campaign meeting in Täby, he admitted that he took the woman by the breasts:
– I probably took her on the breasts when we sat there, we were pretty drunk that night and she pushed her hands away.
The revelation dominated the end of the EU election campaign last year. Peter Lundgren canceled several major appearances and the party also chose to fire Kristina Winberg from the party ballot.
During police questioning, he denied any wrongdoing but admitted that he had taken her by the chest. During questioning, Lundgren said several times that the woman “challenged him” and that he “blinked one eye.”
He flirts a bit and sticks out, but then he leans forward, sticks his upper body out, and then literally challenges me. Then I took her by the breasts, she said in questioning, adding that she had been on a vacation trip with the woman after the incident in the hotel room in Nacka.
When the case reached the Jönköping District Court two weeks ago, Lundgren had changed his statements in the media and in police interrogations. Then he no longer remembered that he had taken the woman by the breasts, but above all that it had been a “very pleasant evening” in the hotel room in Nacka.
The prosecutor demanded a fine
In district court, Lundgren said why he had previously admitted that he had taken the woman by the breast, including in various media interviews and that the party itself published a film on Youtube where Lundgren and the woman talk about the incident:
– In this situation, it is about trying to change the narrative that the media puts in the heads of the voters.
Chief prosecutor Maria Sterup demanded a fine for Lundgren in district court. She said she did not remember the incident:
– Your memory loss is not credible.
The party colleague did not want to participate in the police investigation and said in the district court that she did not remember what happened in the hotel room.
