Swede who protested deportation is indicted

STOCKHOLM — Swedish prosecutors have indicted a woman who in July staged a standoff to prevent the deportation of a rejected asylumseeker to Afghanistan by refusing to take her seat on a passenger jet.

The woman, Elin Ersson, was a volunteer with an organization that fights the forced return of Afghan asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected. Ersson, 21, filmed herself in a standoff on July 23 with the cabin crew of a Turkish Airlines flight at Landvetter Airport in Gothenburg.

The indictment, issued Friday in a district court in Gothenburg, said Ersson had violated the Swedish aviation act by remaining standing when the plane was set to take off. Crimes against the act carry fines or a prison sentence of up to six months on conviction.

“She did so with the intention of preventing the plane from departing,” a prosecutor, James von Reis, told the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet on Friday.

Eventually, the captain ordered Ersson and a 50-year-old Afghan man she had been trying to protect off the plane, and it was able to take off. The man was deported later.

Ersson’s lawyer, Thomas Fridh, said her actions on the plane violated no laws. “During the entire action she was prepared to follow the orders of the captain on board, and she left the plane as soon as the pilot decided that she should do so,” Fridh said in an email Saturday.

He said the Swedish aviation act applied only to actions in the air, not on the ground.