It seems too incredible to be believed at first. Why would the United States intervene in an affair which was strictly between Sweden and an African country, and why would it pressure a foreign government to release two – obviously guilty, as we shall see – criminals from a very moderate prison sentence? Even more bizarrely, why would the US government make it a top priority to free two convicts who had devoted their entire lives to fighting against American and Israeli interests, sometimes by offering encouragement to America’s most violent enemies?
Last year, the American journalist Peter Schweizer shed some light on Hillary Clinton’s close relationship with Swedish big business in his book, Clinton Cash. To tell the entire story, however, we need to go back to the early 2000s.
September 11, 2004. On the third anniversary of the infamous terrorist attacks on the United States, the Swedish Revolutionary Communist Youth (RKU) invited an Arab woman who had once been a hijacker herself, and who had in fact been convicted of carrying out an attack on an American passenger plane that had been en route to Israel, to speak at a “solidarity conference” in Gothenburg in support of the then-raging Second Intifada.
The woman was Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The organizer of the conference was Martin Schibbye, editor-in-chief of the RKU's newspaper, Rebell.
Schibbye was 24 years old, and still a journalism student, when he organized the 9/11 conference. This was eight years before his arrest in Ethiopia. During the interim, Schibbye continued his passionate advocacy of violence against both Israel and the United States.
In an issue of Rebell from early 2005, Schibbye encouraged his readers to “support the resistance” against the American military in Iraq, and accused the US of “murdering and plundering the Iraqi people.” He also made it clear that in his opinion "the only good soldier in the US Marine Corps in Iraq today is a dead one who is sent home in a body bag."
On July 1, 2011, Schibbye was arrested in Ethiopia, together with his photographer Johan Persson, another anti-American activist, while they were attempting to illegally cross the border from Somalia while investigating a petroleum company which was conducting business in the disputed Ogaden region. The Swedish government immediately acted to rescue its two citizens from their predicament. In media reports from the time, the Ethiopian government was accused of trying to put a stop to “legitimate journalism” by prosecuting the two allegedly innocent Communists.
But a video obtained by Fria Tider in 2012 tells a different story. In the video, which was shot by the two journalists themselves and later confiscated by the Ethiopian security forces, the two Swedish radicals can be seen planning their illegal entry into Ethiopia from a hotel room in Nairobi.
“We have contracted with some armed security guards and obtained some jeeps, plural, in order to illegally cross the border from Somalia,” Martin Schibbye says in the video. He continues, “Apparently it’s like our fixer said two days ago: everyone has a gun, and we just need to make sure that we have more guns than everyone else.” He goes on to describe the mercenaries as their “small private army.”
Other videos from their abbreviated trip which were found on the two Communists’ cameras showed Johan Persson handling an AK-47 assault rifle, as well as other illegal activities.
After crossing the border, the two Swedes were arrested at gunpoint by the Ethiopian security forces. They were later sentenced to eleven years in prison for the crimes of terrorism and illegal entry into the country.
Sweden, which has a tradition of trying to rescue those of its citizens who are convicted of crimes abroad, immediately undertook a diplomatic campaign with the aim of bringing the two Communists home to Stockholm.
In an interview, the Swedish ambassador to Ethiopia at the time, Jens Odlander, described the astonishment among Swedish diplomats when the US State Department offered its help. Fria Tider called Odlander two days before the American presidential election in order to ask about Hillary Clinton’s role in the matter, but he was unwilling to discuss it.
“Everything that I'm able to tell you has already been said before,” he stated.
But in a book released before Clinton announced her candidacy, the Swedish diplomat was more talkative. In his 2014 book, Silent Diplomacy, Odlander wrote that an American diplomat, Molly Phee, promised the Swedes that Hillary Clinton would directly contact Ethiopia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hailemariam Desalegn, in order to pressure him into releasing the Swedish terrorists. “Hailemariam will be informed that Ethiopia has nothing to gain from imprisoning the Swedes,” the American diplomat assured her Swedish counterparts, according to Jens Odlander.
In a later interview with SVT, Sweden’s public television network, Odlander confirmed that Hillary Clinton and her UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, personally attended the meeting with the Ethiopian government. Shortly thereafter, Ethiopia decided to pardon the two Swedes and release them.
It is not known why Hillary Clinton decided to help get the two anti-American activists released from prison, or how the Swedish government was able to influence her to act in a way that seems contrary to the interests of her country. However, in 2010, the Swedish government approved the registration of a trust, the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, which has since been a conduit used to transfer large amounts of money from sources close to the Swedish government to the Clinton Foundation. One of the trust’s largest donors is Postkodlotteriet, a lottery sanctioned by the Swedish government. Until 2014, the Swedish politican Margot Wallstrom, who is today Sweden’s Minister of Foreign Affairs (and Jens Odlander’s boss), was one of the lottery's board members.
Fria Tider has contacted Hillary Clinton’s campaign by e-mail to inquire about her efforts to free Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson and her connections to the Swedish government. Our questions remained unanswered as of Tuesday morning.
