Far-right youths form supporters’ group
It was supposed to be an ordinary Monday night match in Sweden’s Division 4.
IFK Aspudden-Tellus hosted IFK Tumba at Aspuddens IP on April 21, 2025. It was hardly the kind of match that should have required any significant police presence.
But behind the scenes, a political conflict had begun to develop around the small football club.
Since the spring of 2023, a group of teenagers had formed a far-right supporters’ group around the club, making a point of spreading Nazi messages in the stands and on social media.
Eventually, the club’s management reacted. Shortly before matchday, the club questioned the group’s use of both the club itself and its crest.
What they could hardly have anticipated was what awaited them.
Older activists from the neo-Nazi Active Club Sweden movement also showed up for the match.
Among them were Gustav Blomberg and another leading figure in the Stockholm-based White Boys chapter of Active Club. The latter would later be sentenced to several years in prison following the widely publicized night of violence last year.
But they were not alone.
At the same time, another group was making its way toward the football pitch.
Far-left extremists mobilize
Activists from Sweden’s Antifa cell “Antifascist action, AFA” also arrived at the scene.
Sources who were present describe how around ten people, unknown to the regular attendees, suddenly appeared at the football ground. Several were masked and armed with glass bottles, paving stones and pepper spray.
Among them was Antifa activist Joel Bjurströmer Almgren (19790118), a veteran of the militant left with a long history of serious criminal offenses. In 2014, he was convicted of attempted manslaughter following a knife attack during the Kärrtorp riots. More recently, he had also served two years in prison for a serious weapons offense.
Now he was out again.
Almgren himself claimed that he had only gone there for a “demonstration against the far right.” Antifa activist Nadim Baalbaki (19910126) gave a similar explanation.
But there would be no football.
The match had not even begun when the violence erupted. Around 20 people became involved in the brawl.
“The next second, I’m on the ground”
In the middle of the chaos stood a 16-year-old boy.
He regularly went to Aspuddens IP to watch football. That day, he was supposed to meet a friend.
Everything happened quickly. Shortly after he noticed around ten people dressed in dark clothing, Joel Bjurströmer Almgren appeared.
According to the boy, Almgren angrily shouted “you” at him. He replied, “yes.”
The boy identified Almgren as the person who struck first. He fell to the ground.
There, several people, including Almgren, continued punching and kicking him. For 30 to 45 seconds, the boy lay curled up in the fetal position, trying to protect his head with his arms, while the far-left extremists attempted to get at his valuables.
A police officer witnessed the assault from a distance of 40 to 50 meters.
Then came the bottle
But the violence did not end with the attack on the teenager.
The Active Club activists tried to intervene. In court, Gustav Blomberg described seeing a person lying on the ground while around ten people punched and kicked him.
Blomberg moved closer.
Then came the bottle.
According to Blomberg’s testimony, Almgren tried to strike him with a glass bottle. He managed to duck.
Seconds later, Blomberg saw Almgren instead strike another Active Club activist in the back of the head with the bottle. The blow caused wounds to the head and a hematoma around the nose.
Then people began to disappear.
Most of the far-left extremists managed to leave the scene before police reinforcements arrived. One of them was Sixten Sandqvist (20040617) from Uppsala.
Bjurströmer Almgren, however, did not get away.
When police arrested him at the scene, his hands were bloody. He immediately requested to be represented by attorney Linus Gardell of Lewis Langley, a law firm that has become a recurring choice among far-left extremists.
Police later also detained Baalbaki.
Withdrew his testimony
When one of the Active Club activists was later questioned in district court, his memory had suddenly become considerably worse.
He could no longer remember whether he had even been at the scene. He did not remember being struck with a bottle. He even dismissed his own police report, a detailed interview spanning several pages, as something that “sounded like a counter-report.”
Why his memory suddenly failed him is, of course, something we can only speculate about.
One possible explanation is the classic “honor among thieves” found in hooligan and criminal circles: you settle matters with violence and do not run to the police when you yourself get beaten up.
The same code of honor has hardly characterized the far left.
When Antifa activist Rebecka Roos (19890625) and her associates themselves lost the upper hand after attempting to attack their opponents, for example, they went to the police and reported them.
Almgren: I didn’t hit anyone
Joel Bjurströmer Almgren denied both the assault on the 16-year-old and the bottle attack. During police questioning, he answered “no comment” to virtually every question, in line with the defense strategy Antifa recommends to its activists.
In district court, however, he was considerably more talkative.
Almgren admitted that he had seen the teenager lying on the ground with more than five people around him, but claimed that he himself had not taken part in the assault.
He also denied the bottle attack. Almgren explained the bloody injuries to his hand by claiming that police had forced him to the ground amid broken glass.
The district court did not accept his explanation.
The 16-year-old’s identification of Almgren was deemed reliable and was supported by several witness accounts.
The same applied to the bottle attack. The witness testimony, together with Almgren’s bloody hands at the time of his arrest, led the district court to conclude that he was the perpetrator.
He was sentenced to one year in prison for two counts of assault. Almgren was also ordered to pay SEK 33,000 in damages to the teenager: SEK 30,000 for violation of his personal integrity and SEK 3,000 for pain and suffering.
But it did not end there.
When Almgren committed the offenses, he was still on conditional release from his previous prison sentence for a serious weapons offense.
The district court therefore revoked the remaining 244 days of his conditional release.
Nadim Baalbaki acquitted
Nadim Baalbaki, on the other hand, was acquitted.
He too had been identified following the incident, but the district court found the identification too uncertain. It was based largely on social media images examined after the fact, rather than a reliable identification at the scene.
The prosecutor had therefore failed to prove that Baalbaki had participated in the assault, and he was acquitted.
Christian Peterson