STOCKHOLM - Otto Sjöberg, Expressen’s editor-in-chief, stands by his apology to Marie Fredriksson, in spite of new developments in the legal proceedings reported yesterday.

  Sjöberg declined to comment to Martin Jönsson, a reporter for Journalisten (a magazine and website for Swedish journalists), about the fact that the libel trial against him has now been postponed. He also doesn’t want to comment on the information about Marie Fredriksson in legal counselor Peter Danowsky’s letter to Fredriksson’s lawyer, where it is claimed that Expressen had at the time received new information about her health condition.

  However, he stresses that the apology published last spring, where he apologized to Marie Fredriksson for letting the newspaper speculate about her health condition, is not affected by these new developments.

  “I apologized for speculating about her test results, and that it could’ve been a malignant tumor. We had information about a new lump – information that we’ve all along maintained was credible – but it was wrong of us to speculate. It was a mistake. But it won’t affect the legal process, or what happens now,” Sjöberg says.

  Marie Fredriksson’s attorney, Leif Silbersky, interprets yesterday’s happenings as Expressen retracting their previous apology: “Their actions are completely absurd. First they maintain that they are right, then they back off and apologize, and now they retract the whole thing [just] before the trial. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

• Journalisten’s article (in Swedish)