Bank raid nazis arrested

Terje Sjølie and Werner Holm, two führers of the Oslo nazi gang, Bootboys, were arrested on 23 October for bank robbery. According to police, one of them entered a bank in Halden, near the Swedish border, with a sawn-off shotgun, and ordered a cashier to hand over money. Netting less than £9,000, they made off in a stolen car with false Swedish number plates.

From Sven Johansen in Oslo

Despite the fact that American movies available in Norwegian video shops teach that bank robbers should have at least two, preferably three  getaway cars, the duo drove the same car across the Swedish border. Pursued by both Norwegian and Swedish police, the pair,  armed with the shotgun and an AG3 assault rifle, decided to count the money only to end up drenched with green paint from exploding colour cartridges hidden in their loot.

After a car chase in which police used helicopters and several cars were damaged, the two men were finally arrested in Karlstad, about 50 kilometres inside Sweden. Holm has confessed to the crime but Sjølie is refusing to talk. Sjølie was recently sentenced to  three years in prison for attempted murder while Holm, on the same day as the robbery, was convicted for violence.

Sjølie is also facing charges for incitement to racial hatred, after the speech at the Rudolf Hess march in August accusing the Jews of  plundering the country, and ³replacing our values with immoral and  un-Norwegian values.²

Their leaders behind bars, Bootboys activists are  concentrating more on crime than politics. Another leading member, Ole Nicolai  Kvisler, has been charged with eight different incidents, mostly car theft, since mid-August. His latest arrest was on 9 November when he,  together with convicted arsonist Erik Lauritzen and Morten Svendsen, was  arrested for driving a stolen car.

Strangely, other nazis seem to envy Bootboys ­ also known as Boozeboys because of their propensity for drinking ­ for their ability to notch up criminal convictions. In  the southern city of Kristiansand, fifteen fascists have deserted Tore  William Tvedt¹s nazi group Vigrid to form a local branch of Bootboys. Less soaked in alcohol than their Oslo-based comrades, they have picked several fights with young immigrants in the town centre.

Despite the focus on street violence and crime, some nazis are still trying to emulate the Front National in France by establishing a suit-and-tie party. To this end, the Norwegian National Alliance, formerly known  as the White Electoral Alliance, has changed its name to Norwegian Popular Party.

The party¹s leader is Oddbjørn Jonstad, thrown out  of Carl I.Hagen¹s Progress Party last September. Jonstad was news during last year¹s election campaign when demanded the  internment of all asylum seekers.

Jonstad is leader but the main wire-pullers are the well-known nazis, Arnljot Moseng and Kjell Tore Vogsland, who are running the party¹s web server and the newspaper, Fremtid (Future) as a private company registered in their own names.

Apart from changing the appearance of their web site, there is nothing new about the Popular Party whose recent poster  campaign in Bergen, was very effectively sabotaged by  local anti-fascists. The political climate for fascists in Norway  remains arctic and, because the nazis spend most of their time in prison or drinking, the real challenge will come from the right-wing populist Progress Party.