Over the past few years the local government's increasing use of several security companies in the Stockholm subway has coincided with a significant rise in attacks by guards against working people. In 1999, for example, 813 people, overwhelmingly Blacks and immigrants, were charged by subway guards with "violent resistance," a method the cops use to counter assault charges by victims. The wider use of security guards can be seen in the annual hiring of 1,800 new guards. This is a 70–80 percent increase over five years ago, according to the manager of Väktarskolan (Guard School), which was hired by the government in 1997 to train and license all new guards.

Hocheimy's fight to expose the violence has won wide support, including from a protest leaflet issued by the Network for Adonis signed by dozens of political, immigrant, and religious organizations. Following a public meeting of several hundred last May to condemn security guard violence, High Prosecutor Jan Danielsson was forced to reopen a lawsuit Hocheimy had filed against the security guards.

Last July, however, Chief Prosecutor Bjarne Rosén came out in support of the guard's story, saying Hocheimy "injured himself by throwing himself to the ground." Some 250 young people rallied in downtown Stockholm August 27, rejecting Rosén's slanderous claims. The following weekend, frame-up charges of rape were directed against Hocheimy to undercut his fight for justice. The charges were quickly withdrawn, but they served as fodder for the countercampaign led by Rosén.

In a February 21 interview with the Militant, Hocheimy described the new frame-up attempt. On September 3, he said, a group of cops in civilian clothes knocked on his door and told him he had been charged with rape. Two days earlier, a woman approached Hocheimy and followed him home from Tiger, a night club downtown. "The police said she had accused me of raping her. Then she pulled back the charges and now they are classified. My lawyer can't read them. And I don't know who she is," Hocheimy said.

After his arrest he was kept in a cell for 36 hours while the police searched his apartment. "They wrote in their report that I had put food on the higher shelves and that they had found a wheelchair. I was using another one at the time," Hocheimy said. The report, implying he was lying about being bound to a wheelchair, was used by Rosén, who told the media Hocheimy had undergone a "sensationally rapid recovery."

"I think the prosecutor is trying to delay the trial of the guards that attacked me," Hocheimy said. "But when the trial comes, they might use the rape charge as an argument against me. It's perfect for them--a Black guy and a rapist. I can't believe this is happening."

Rosén has also asked Socialstyrelsen, the Social Welfare Board, to reexamine Hocheimy's injuries in order to overturn a previous medical examination that said Hocheimy was immediately paralyzed during the attack and not capable of the "violent resistance" the guards have charged him with.

Last year the Social Welfare Board was used to dismiss the well-known case of Osmo Vallo, 41, who died in a police cell in Karlstad in 1995. Contrary to a previous autopsy that proved Vallo was killed when a cop was standing on his chest, the board said Vallo died from "drugs and stress" and not police violence. The cops who killed Vallo received only a mild sentence for "causing body injury."

The state's campaign against Hocheimy received support from an article in the Journalist Union paper Journalisten, written by Stefan Wolters, which said journalists have been too supportive of Hocheimy. The right-wing content of the article was repeated in Transportarbetaren, the paper of the Transport Workers Union, which organizes drivers, airport workers, newspaper distributors, dockworkers, and security guards. The articles repeat the prosecutor's claim that Hocheimy has lied about his injuries and is perhaps also guilty of rape.

Hocheimy says that due to neck and other injuries he still suffers pain and remains partly paralyzed. "This journalist didn't even bother to talk to my doctor," he said.

Noting the interest Securitas has in preventing his case against the guards from proceeding, Hocheimy said he is "glad the witnesses have had the courage to tell the truth about what the guards did to me. Ever since they attacked me I've been telling people about it. I want to get even somehow. I want people to know the truth."

Daniel Ahl is a member of the Industrial Union. Dag Tirsén is a member of the Metal Workers Union.
 
 
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