The Liberal Alliance’s group chairman, Ole Birk Olesen, will be in court on Monday and confronted with the statements he made on live TV in the program “Debatten” on DR2 in December 2019.
For the chairman of the Scaffolding Workers’ National Club, Thomas Strømsholt, has sued Ole Birk for libel, after they debated riots on TV at a construction site in Nørrebro in Copenhagen, where a scaffolding and several cars were overturned.
A group of scaffolding workers protested, among other things, that a scaffolding according to them was illegally erected.
In the program, the parliamentary politician, who is a former Minister of Transport, sent several accusations against Thomas Strømsholt.
– He is the leader of a group that goes around committing vandalism and scares competitors away from providing a job for people who want to order them. Of course he should be in jail. He is such a mafia leader, said Ole Birk Olesen.
The question raised by the host Clement Kjærsgaard:
– Do you have evidence for that Ole Birk Olesen?
– Well, I know that! You can see that. There are video recordings of what was going on out in Nørrebro, and it is you and your people who are behind it, Olesen told Strømsholt in the program.
Thomas Strømsholt responded by dismissing the charges.
– Monday (the day of the riots, ed.) I sat and took the drone certificate. Something as boring as a drone certificate, it sounded.
Subsequently, Ole Birk pulled ashore in a post on Facebook, where he wrote that the waves were going high.
– It was over the line, because I can not document that he is involved in the illegalities that his members commit, he wrote, among other things.
For Thomas Strømsholt, however, the case did not end here. He has sued Ole Birk Olesen for libel, and on Monday they will meet in Copenhagen City Court. Strømsholt says that the statements have had consequences for him and his family.
– My son thought that his father was going to prison or had been involved in gross vandalism. That’s not okay.
– It may be that you have broad shoulders and can hold on a lot, but when it hits the family, it hurts, he says.
He also says that the lawsuit is not about getting compensation, but about getting the court’s word that Ole Birk’s statements were not in order.
Ole Birk Olesen will explain himself in court on Monday, but will not comment prior to the case. Instead, his lawyer, René Offersen, says that the politician will be acquitted of libel.
– There is a very far-reaching protection of utterances, which are made as part of the democratic debate, he says.