Claes Borgström

Claes Gustaf Borgström (born 21 July 1944 in Stockholm) is a Swedish lawyer and Left Party politician. Up until 2013, he was a member of the Social Democratic Party.

Education and career

Borgström earned a law degree from Stockholm University in 1974. Thereafter, he started to work as a lawyer. He has worked on several high-profile criminal cases.

Between 2000 and 2007, Borgström served the Swedish government as Equality Ombudsman (JämO). Borgström expressed his dislike of this job to his client Sture Bergwall. He described the job as boring, and he would not stay for the full tenancy.

After the defeat of the Social Democrats in 2006, he resigned to start a law firm, with former Social Democratic Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström as partner. Borgström himself had plans of becoming the Minister of Justice if the Social Democrats had won the election in 2010, according to his client Sture Bergwall. Claes said the following of the current Minister of Justice and his current partner: "I have no high thoughts of Thomas Bodström. It is actually unimaginable how the current Minister of Justice was chosen for his post. He is a shallow person."

Since 2008, he's also been the Swedish Social Democratic Party's spokesperson on gender equality.

Borgström thinks that all men carry a collective responsibility for violence against women, and has in this context supported Gudrun Schyman's "Tax on Men".

He also attracted attention in March 2006 when he demanded that Sweden boycott the 2006 World Cup in Germany "in protest against the increase in the trafficking in women that the event is expected to result in".

In 2010, Borgström successfully appealed the decision to close the sexual assault case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and became the legal representative of the two Swedish women against whom the Swedish police have accused Assange of sexual misconduct. However, it seems the relationship soured, and he was replaced with Elisabeth Massi Fritz.

[The defendant] moved to fire her controversial lawyer Claes Borgstrom [after] she lost faith in his ability to represent her. [She] charged that Borgstrom was more interested in being in the media spotlight than providing her legal counsel, and has often referred her inquiries to his secretary or assistant.

— RT, Assange legal shakeup: Prosecutor walks, Supreme Court judge to speak out on case, March 28 2013, [1]

In 2013, citing his dissatisfaction with what he refers to as the right-leaning changes in the Social Democratic Party, Borgström changed his party membership to the Swedish Left Party.

Personal life

Borgström married his former colleague Märit Borgström (née Röger) in 2007. He has three children from an earlier marriage. He is the brother of journalists Annette Kullenberg and Kerstin Vinterhed.