STOCKHOLM - A 60-year-old woman was sentenced to two months in jail Tuesday for attacking the leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats with a cake and driving without a licence.
“She abused Jimmie Aakesson by pushing a cake into his face,” the Stockholm court wrote in the sentence. Irene Matkowitzc, who admitted to the crime, was ordered to pay 5,000 kronor ($775, 562 euros) in damages to the party leader and cover his 300 kronor dry cleaning bill. Matkowitzc attacked the Sweden Democrats leader during a book signing in central Stockholm in November 2013, when she shoved a Swedish cream cake she had concealed in her jacket in his face, shouting “fascist bastard”.
She was sentenced to jail instead as she was also found guilty of three incidents of driving without a licence - and had 13 previous convictions.
Matkowitzc defended her attack as the work of a militant anti-racist opposing “a symbol of neo-fascism”. Aakesson’s party is fighting for third place with the Green Party in Sweden’s September general election where the ruling conservative Moderate Party will be challenged by the Social Democrat-led opposition.
The woman faced charges of harassment at Stockholm District Court for attacking the Sweden Democrat leader at a book signing in Stockholm last November. She was found guilty, fined, and in conjunction with other outstanding crimes sentenced to spend two months behind bars.
She did not deny the attack, but downplayed its significance. “A bit of cream doesn’t really cause a lot of damage,” she told the court. Åkesson disagreed. “It was a violation of me as a person and to some degree of me as a politician,” he explained as he gave evidence over the phone during the trial.
He also said that his attacker had looked like a “nice lady” when she approached him at the event, before she called him a “fascist shit” and launched the cake at him. In an interview with the Expressen newspaper, the 60-year-old said she had attacked Åkesson because he was a fascist.