A couple of Swedish-language reports show attempts by the Sweden Democrat (SD) Party and by Kent Ekeroth to distance themselves from Alan Lake, the former English Defence League activist; meanings can be gleaned from Google Translate (slightly tidied-up as used here).
On Wednesday, a documentary strand on STV called Uppdrag Granskning had a general overview of the EDL in the context of “counterjihad” activism and the Utøya massacre, including an interview with Lake (from 36:23). Lake’s “chickens come home roost” statement was put to him; he admitted this sounded like a “justification”, but insisted that this had not been his intent – it was supposed to be a “statement of causality”.
In the same programme, the SD’s Mattias Karlsson described statements made by Lake as “very unpleasant. And it’s so far from what we as a party stands for as you can get” (1).
Regarding a meeting in Malmo in 2009 which involved Lake and the SD’s Kent Ekeroth, Karlsson stressed that:
What I want to emphasize is that we as a party never sent out Ekeroth on official mission to participate in these meetings and we have not funded them. (2)
Expo, meanwhile, is sceptical of this, noting that the SD newspaper had published a report in which the meeting was described as having been organised by the party and as having been a success. Further:
Ekeroth did not want to answer more questions but said he would not have invited the Lake if he had known what statements he would make in the future. (3)
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(1) From the documentary website: “Det är väldigt obehagligt. Och det är ju så långt ifrån vad vi som parti står för som man kan komma.”
(2) As transcribed by Expo: “Det jag vill poängtera är att vi som parti aldrig skickat ut Ekeroth på officiella uppdrag att delta på de här mötena och vi har inte finansierat dem. Det är något som han gjort på eget bevåg.”
(3) “Ekeroth vill inte svara på fler frågor men säger att han inte hade bjudit in Lake om han hade känt till vilka uttalanden han skulle göra i framtiden.”
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