Oklahoma sheriff hung out with Nazi mail bombers – in Sweden

Bart Alsbrook, recently accused by Southern Poverty Law Center of running two web sites connected to the Nazi network Blood and Honour, has offered to resign from his appointment as interim chief of police in Colbert, Oklahoma.

Bart Alsbrook, interim chief of police in Colbert, Oklahoma. Screen grab from local tv network KXII.

The Web sites, for companies NS88 Videos and ISD Records, disappeared from the Internet soon after local media called Alsbrook to ask him about the accusations.

Bart Alsbrook, the only person in the US with that name, claims his wallet was stolen by Nazi skinheads in Texas in the early 1990's, and that they have used his identity ever since.

If his story sounds far-fetched, it is because Bart Alsbrook obviously doesn't speak the truth. In fact, he has a long history as a prominent member of the Scandinavian branch of Blood and Honour in the 1990's. And in case you suspect this to be a mere case of a fabricated passport by crafty Texan skinheads – there are pictures to prove it's not.

Marko "Jäsä" Järvinen, Erik Blücher, Marcel Schilf and Bart Alsbrook in the Blood and Honour pamphlet "Blood & Honour: The Way Forward".

Bart Alsbrook was a public figure in Blood and Honour, as this picture from one of the organization's mid-90's pamphlets clearly show. While the people in the picture are captioned with different countries, they all hung out together in the southern Swedish town of Helsingborg, just across the narrow straits from Denmark, in the greater Copenhagen area.

Marko Järvinen was a video producer, Erik Blücher (aka Nielsen, aka Hartmann) ran the record label Ragnarock Records and White Power concert venue Club Valhalla, Marcel Schilf, born in East Germany, ran the company NS88 Videos. And Bart Alsbrook was for a while on the editorial staff of the Swedish Nazi magazine, Nordland.

One evening in May, 1996, a brawl outside the club house of Frontline, the then-supporter club for the city's soccer team, saw one young man stabbed in the back. Present among the people fighting him was Marcel Schilf and Bart Alsbrook. The latter was indicted for the stabbing, but eventually aquitted.

His friends in Blood and Honour, Marcel Schilf in particular, have been suspected of involvement in more far reaching political violence. A number of mail bomb campaigns in the 1990's targeting both political enemies to the left and rivals within the far right have connections to Blood and Honour and Helsingborg. One of the attacks where a Danish B&H member was proven guilty was directed towards the then Swedish Attorney General, Laila Freivalds.

An earlier mail bomb campaign in Denmark and Sweden where Schilf was also a suspect, targeted left wing politicans. A bomb sent to the offices of International Socialists in Copenhagen in 1992 left one person dead. Similar bombs were sent to Swedes in the same movement, although those bombs did not detonate.

Marcel Schilf was among the arrested after the death of Danish socialist Henrik Christensen in the 1992 attack, but he was aquitted due to lack of evidence.

Nothing points towards Bart Alsbrook being personally involved in the bombings, and he has never been indicted for them. But it is obvious he worked closely together with people who there is strong reason to suspect were, pursuing the same political goals.