Hey everyone,
So Em was in court today for their hearing. Which was in Norwegian obviously, so we didn’t really understand anything that went on. We know they haven’t been sentenced yet, that will come in a few days. We also learned that when their sentence is finished, they will not be released in Norway, but will be deported (most likely to the UK) immediately.
The prosecution is asking for a sentence of 45 days. The lawyer expects them to receive a sentence of around 30 days, of which 14 have already been served.
We cannot stress just how fucking boring the court case was. Before lunch, we watched a 40 minute video statement from Solveig Horne, presumably talking about how traumatised she was. After lunch, the prosecuting attorney talked for literally a solid hour without interruption. The person sitting beside them seemed to just be there to give Em and us dirty looks the whole time. I didn’t see her facial expression change even once.
The best bit was when the cop from the politiets sikkerhetstjeneste presented as evidence the pink and black flag of which Em was in possession at the time of their arrest. She also printed out what appeared to be the Wikipedia article on anarchist symbolism. The cop seemed immensely proud of and delighted with herself that she had managed to decipher the meaning of such an esoteric symbol. She read aloud from a piece of paper which said (in English) something like “queer anarchism is a revolutionary practice that seeks to overthrow the state and the gender binary”. The translator then attempted to translate this into Norwegian, but got stuck on the phrase “gender binary”. The judge, the cop, the prosecuting attorney and the translator all kind of looked up at each other curiously, but they just shrugged — none of them could shed any light on the meaning of this bizarre utterance.
We gave Em lots of smiles and made funny hand signals at them. And we gave them some hugs and stuff when the opportunities arose. They smiled at us a lot and seemed to really appreciate us being there — hopefully it lifted their spirits. They seem to be doing well. And they’re going to be listening to the Attack on Democracy radio show on RadiOrakel this evening for sure! So if you have anything you think Em would like to listen to, send it to us and we’ll make sure it ends up in an episode of the show.