TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1999

Born in Norway - by German parents Tomas Lindkvist 29 years old, Askersund. Torulf Magnusson 30 years old, Linköping. Peter Melander 29 years old, Stockholm. Thomas Möller 35 years old, Staffanstorp. Björn Nord 27 years old, Karlstad. Jonas Persson 23 years old, Örebro. Jimmy Nicklasson 20 years old, Stockholm. Andreas Olofsson 19 years old, Klippan. Erik Nilsen was born in the city of Moss in Norway on May 29, 1953. His parents are German, but he grew up in Norway after his father had got a job as an engineer at a large Norwegian company. In the beginning of the seventies he studied law at the university in Oslo. On May 1, 1976 the first demonstration that was openly Nazi since the Second World War, was organised by the right-wing extremist movement Norsk Front (Norwegian Front), founded by Nilsen. In connection with this demonstration Nilsen held his first public speech.   In the Autumn of 1983 he moved to Örebro (in Sweden) where he had established contacts via Nordiska Rikspartiet. Erik Nilsen became in this way one of the founders of Bevara Sverige Svenskt (BSS).   He supports himself in Sweden in the same way as he has done since he was 19 years old: by producing and selling music, Nazi publications, revisionist literature where the Holocaust is denied. Among others he has printed the newspaper of the Arian Brotherhood in which the murder of John Hron in Kode is defended.   Under the first half of the eighties the music was mostly German marches, but here was the embryo to what in the nineties has made Nilsen a leading figure in the international industry around White Power music.   1985 Erik Nilsen moved to Helsingborg and changed his name from Blücher to Nilsen.    In the Spring of 1997 Nilsen started to make agitation tours around the country. One of the latest meetings that we have traced Erik Nilsen to took place on August 28 this year in Tomelilla.   It was, like the meeting in Mullsjö, arranged by active NSF-members. This time by Tobias Malvå, well-known Nazi assailant, that recently has moved to Tomelilla. He is now, together with two other Nazis, under arrest for serious illegal threats. After the meeting swastikas were pasted on the police station    The meeting attracted 150 people to a hall outside Tomelilla, that officially was rented for a crayfish-party. The propaganda chief of NSF, Björn Björkqvist, held a speech as well as Erik Nilsen.   Then something happened in the otherwise so quiet Tomelilla. Under October the number of cases of damage in society was doubled, as was the number of car thefts.   But there was something else as well. Stickers with swastikas were stuck on the police station, leaflets from National Socialist Front with the heading "Fellowship before diversity" and slogans such as "Integration is genocide" were handed out in schools and to residents in the community.   The head of the local government John Johansson (m) became more and more concerned.   -These things threaten to stain our town and give us a reputation we do not deserve. Tomelilla is actually a good place for those who want to grow up in peace and quiet.   Johansson had said this also in an interview in the newspaper Sydsvenskan.   The same Sunday that the interview was published the telephone rang at the Johansson's home.   The person that rang said that he was a representative of National Socialist Front. He didn't say what his name was, but wanted to speak to John Johansson.   -I didn't consider it as threatening at that time. He was verbal, said that the Holocaust hadn't occurred and that he wanted to send literature that showed this.   The head of the local government declined the offer referring to the fact that he trusted more his impressions from a round-trip to the extermination camps.    Two days later the threat came.   It was Tuesday at lunch time and John Johansson had gone home to have lunch. In the mailbox there was a brown envelope, postmarked in Malmö. He opened it without thinking much about it.   Then he became ice-cold. In the envelope there was a letter with the letterhead of the Nazi terrorist organisation Combat 18. Beside the logotype there was a drawing of an armed man with a hood and a Nazi flag. In the letter it said that John Johansson and his family now were sentenced to death for high treason.    John Johansson did not show the letter to his family, but handed it over to the police. He first tried to get the whole thing out of his mind and see it as a boyish prank. But then the discomfort came.   -One hears about how militant these groups can be.   John Johansson says that he now checks the mail twice before he opens it, but that he still walks right across the town square without hiding.   -I am not going to become silent. I have said what I have said about racism and Nazism and I will stand by it.