Jackie Arklöv

Jackie Arklöv
Jackie Arklöv mug-shot
Born	June 6, 1973 (1973-06-06) Liberia
Charge(s)	1993 Crimes against humanity in Bosnia 1999 murder of two police officers in Sweden
Penalty	Life imprisonment
Status	Imprisoned at the Kumla High Security Prison
Occupation	Mercenary

Jackie Banny Arklöv (born June 6, 1973) is a Swedish convicted criminal. Arklöv is an ex-neo-Nazi and former mercenary in the Yugoslav wars, who murdered two police officers during a botched robbery in 1999.

Early life

Arklöv was born in Liberia; his mother was black and his father was white. At the age of three he was adopted by a couple from a small village in northern Sweden, and in his teens he developed a strong interest in Nazism and World War II. Later on he wrote a letter to the neonazi-organisation Nationalsocialistisk Front that was published in their official magazine.

Bosnia

Arklöv participated voluntarily in the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, as a mercenary on the Croatian side when he was only 19 years old. He has been accused of war crimes, including torturing Bosnian prisoners in camps in Gabela and Grabovina.

After the war he was sentenced to thirteen years in prison by a Bosnian court. The court later changed the sentence to eight years, taking Arklöv's youth into consideration. He spent one year in a Bosnian prison, but returned to Sweden after an exchange of prisoners organized by the Swedish Red Cross. In Sweden he was taken into custody, but after a while he was acquitted for lack of evidence.

Police murders

While in custody Arklöv received several letters from another Neo-Nazi, Tony Olsson, who was starting a new neonazi organisation and, impressed by Arklöv's war experience, wanted him to join. Arklöv wrote back, and the two became friends. After being released, Arklöv and Olsson met with the other members of the newly started NRA (Nationalistiska Republikanska Armén, the Nationalistic Republican Army), among them Andreas Axelsson and Mats Nilsson.

This arrangement resulted in a robbery tour of the Swedish province of Östergötland in 1999, which ended on May 28 in the small town of Kisa where Arklöv, Olsson and Axelsson robbed a bank. Tony Olsson waited outside the bank armed with an UZI submachine gun while Arklöv and Axelsson went inside the bank, kicked open a door to the offices and cashregisters and threatened the employees to open the vaults. Due to the vault being time-locked, the robbers were forced to wait 12 minutes before leaving the bank with a large sum of cash. They got away with over two million SEK, but during their escape a lone policeman, Kennet Eklund, followed them in his car. The robbers spotted him and opened fire, two hand-grenades were thrown in his direction and against his car. Both hand grenades exploded but Eklund got away without any injuries while the robbers continued their escape. About 10 minutes later the two policemen Olle Borén and Robert Karlström spot the robbers' vehicle and drive after them in their own police car. Gunfire occurred as both cars had stopped, and the two policemen were gunned down and executed with their own firearms.

Arklöv and Olsson fled, but Axelsson had been hit by a bullet and was taken to the hospital by a car flagged down by Arklöv. On May 31, 1999 Arklöv was shot by the police in Tyresö outside Stockholm and again arrested and put into custody.

Trial

During the trial, Arklöv claimed to be completely innocent. He said he had been in Stockholm the entire time and did not take part in any of the robberies or the murders. This time, however, the evidence against him was strong. The police had found his fingerprints on a gun, and his DNA on a mask and in the car. After that he confessed to the robbery in Kisa, but still denied having killed the policemen. All three of the men appear to have been involved, and it could never be proved who was the killer.

The court then found them all guilty of murder, since it was clear that they had all been shooting at the two policemen, and they were sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence was appealed to the Court of Appeal, and Arklöv kept denying he had anything to do with the murders. The Court of Appeal gave the same sentence; life imprisonment for all three.

Crimes against humanity charges

In March 2004, the Dagens Nyheter journalist Maciej Zaremba published an article strongly criticizing the closure of the case, and he also managed to find several witnesses to the war crimes. Later that year the prosecutor decided to re-open the investigation, and in June 2006 it was clear that Arklöv would be prosecuted. His trial opened on November 10, 2006 and the judges made their ruling on December 18, 2006. The court ruled that Arklöv was guilty of wrongful imprisonment, torture and assault of 11 Bosnian Muslim prisoners of war and civilians, ethnic cleansing, looting, and arbitrary detention of people; crimes protected by international law. He was ordered to pay between 70,000–425,000 kronor (€7,700–€47,000; US$10,100–US$62,000) to 11 victims.

In prison

In 2001 Arklöv decided to confess: he admitted killing the two Swedish policemen. Olsson and Axelsson moved a petition for a new trial to the Supreme Court, but that court regarded the life sentence as written in such a way that Arklöv's confession would not change anything. The petition was rejected. At the same time Arklöv said he had abandoned his Nazi beliefs and had contacted the Exit group for support. Arklöv is serving his life sentence at the Kumla High Security Prison. He is an artist, and had seven paintings put out on an exhibition for prison art at Långholmen in Stockholm.