Swedish Security Research Articles

International Law Enforcement Observer XIV.

Aim: Despite the fact that this time, the Observer provides insight into a wide range of topics in the international law enforcement literature – from counter-terrorism to football security – the editorial purpose that influenced the selection is still recognisable. The aim is to focus readers’ interest on methods that focus on facts and require publicity. Examples will be given that demonstrate that unjustified secrecy can be an obstacle not only to scientific research but also to effective professional work. Methodology: Tamás Drusza’s review shows that in the United Kingdom, a tactic of combining intelligence and criminal investigation is used to counter terrorism effectively, which also means that the flow of information between organisations is a critical point in the system's operation. Secrecy between authorities can lead to inefficiency. ‘The drawbacks of applying the principle of restricting the transfer of information have been confirmed by a survey of Europol staff. The general view is that proactively sharing information is as important as obtaining it.’ Of course, in order for such a counterproductive application of the principle of confidentiality to come to light, it was necessary for police academics to carry out the necessary research in a sensitive area of service and then publish the results in a way that would allow even Hungarian colleagues interested in the subject to be informed by means of a review. Findings: Beyond the threat of terror, all forms of violent radicalism in the broader sense need to be countered by social cohesion, as András Hunor Lehel illustrates with the Swedish example. ‘According to a 2016 report by the Swedish Security Service, approximately 300 people have left Sweden to join various violent Islamist groups abroad and fight alongside their organisations. Many of these men have returned to Sweden and represent a potential threat to the community.’ The study concludes that local authorities play a key role in detecting and preventing radicalisation, alongside central government. It is no coincidence that resilience has emerged as a key concept. Swedish municipalities are expected to develop plans that include measures to increase resilience at local and community level. Andrea Mészáros gives an insight into research conducted at the Tempe Police Department in Arizona. Here, they sought to understand how measures were affected by the pandemic in March 2020, and then by the national outcry over the death of George Floyd, a victim of police violence. The study analysed 474 measures, selected at random and all of which were recorded on body camera. Researchers said a review of the body-worn camera footage highlighted that despite the extreme circumstances, police officers handled encounters with citizens in a professional manner. Tamás Pressburger reports on new methods of policing football matches. The experience in England suggests that police officers responsible for the security of football grounds have successfully improved the effectiveness of their work through a change of approach, with sufficient training and practical experience. Police officers also need to work closely with the cultural and emotional dynamics of football fans, and need empathic skills to intervene effectively and constructively in escalating situations. Value: The reviews presented a number of solutions that have found new ways to challenge the traditional approach to policing. These include replacing the myth of secrecy with openness that emphasises cooperation, consensus based on empathy rather than confrontation, resilience that leads to the resolution of the trauma that accompanies violence, and the dissolution of centralisation with the principle of self-government.

Soviet Espionage in Sweden: The Vasilii Sidorenko Case of 1942

This is a study of a Soviet espionage mission in Sweden in 1942 under the aegis of the intelligence officer Vasilii Sidorenko. Aside from trying to reconstruct, on the basis of material filed with the archive of the Swedish Security Police (Säpo), the history of the mission, the article also addresses methodological challenges following from the fact that we must, as Soviet material remains very scarce, approach Sidorenko’s mission indirectly, through material generated by the Swedish police. The article is therefore structured in terms of three separate fields of inquiry—a first that addresses the organization of Sweden’s counterespionage with regard the Sidorenko mission, a second that addresses the organization and institutional context within which Sidorenko operated, and a third that addresses the accounts of five Swedish citizens who were suspected and later sentenced for having assisted Sidorenko to collect military intelligence in Sweden. The article concludes that the suggested framework with three fields of inquiry might be helpful in the study of offensive espionage operations in a more general sense.

Tracing Shifting Host Country Problematization(s) of Transnational Repression: The Evolution of Swedish Efforts to Counter “Refugee Espionage”

ABSTRACT Not least since the brutal killing of Saudi journalist and regime-critic Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in late 2018 has the question of transnational repression emerged on the agendas of human rights activists, policy makers, and scholars of migration and authoritarianism. Such practices are commonly conceptualized as a dyadic interaction between repressor and repressed. However, on closer inspection, the dyad is, in fact, a triad. Relatively few studies account for or explore the context in which such acts of transnational repression occur: the countries of residence in which targets and victims reside. Taking inspiration from the problematization framework, this article deepens our understanding of the complex and multifaceted ways in which Sweden, a country often lauded for its comprehensive approach and response to transnational repression, has constructed “refugee espionage” as a challenge not only for law enforcement and intelligence agencies but also, Swedish bilateral relations and sovereignty. Through an in-depth analysis of 21 annual reports published by the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO), the article shows how the conceptualization and problematization of the issue has – often in response to particular incidents – become both broader and wider over time.

United we stand, divided we sue: Collective access to court for labour and social security claims in Sweden

While Sweden has long enjoyed a solid reputation for protecting weaker parties through a comprehensive welfare state and a labour market governed by collective bargaining, its system for enforcing these rights has rested upon the public authorities and the social partners rather than on judicial proceedings. Against this background, this article examines the legal avenues for bringing collective actions and obtaining collective redress before courts in social security and labour law cases in Sweden. It finds that the relevant legislation does not explicitly provide for collective redress in either field. Within social security law, collective access to court is practically excluded, whereas in labour law, the current procedural framework can only with difficulty be construed as lending itself to measures of collective redress, and then only with some significant legal and practical limitations. While indicative of the general situation as regards collective redress in Sweden, whose legislation on group actions has been criticised for its toothlessness and has been put to little practical use, this also suggests that the tradition of collectivism in the Swedish social security and labour market systems still does not translate into collectivism in judicial redress.

“The Hultqvist doctrine” – Swedish security and defence policy after the Russian annexation of Crimea

ABSTRACT This article analyses how Sweden has adapted to the worsened security situation in its vicinity following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and war in Eastern Ukraine. The paper builds on security policy research focused on neoclassic realism and small state strategies in order to explore how the, broadly unknown, security policy from 2009 has been implemented in practice since 2014, through what observers call the “Hultqvist doctrine.” The aim is to bring clarity to how the Hultqvist doctrine best can be understood – as a non-aligned or an integration policy? – and how the strategy relates to both systemic forces and domestic circumstances. The paper addresses the puzzle posed by structural realism, that the systemic forces would work to encourage Sweden to align in face of the threat that emerged in 2014. Still, Sweden has resisted NATO membership. To this end, I construct and apply an analytical framework that not only reveals the degree of novelty in the doctrine, but also allows for an evaluation of integration in three dimensions – openness, inclusiveness and comprehensiveness – in combination with a screening dimension. Following neoclassical realism, the study furthermore identifies domestic conditions that hinder policy flexibility.

Sweden’s Collective Defence Obligations or this is Not a Collective Defence Pact (or Is It?): Considerations of International and Constitutional Law

Abstract This article analyses the content of the mutual defence obligation contained in the EU Treaty Article 42(7) in relation to the Swedish constitutional rule on the sending of armed forces abroad and the emerging ’deepened defence cooperation’ between Sweden and Finland. The article tries to understand the prevailing Swedish position in legal terms and suggests an alternative flexible way on Sweden’s part of conceiving the binding force of Article 42(7). The question is whether the EU Treaty contains an international obligation of a quality to activate a provision in the Swedish Constitution entitling the government to decide on its own, without having to seek the otherwise necessary approval by Parliament, to send Swedish armed forces to other countries for instance on a mission of collective self-defence. The possibility of looking at the EU Treaty and the Swedish Instrument of Government in this way is not considered in any of the Swedish official inquiries into the Swedish security and defence policy of which there have been quite a few recently.

Source Criticism as a Technology of Government in the Swedish Psychological Defence: The Impact of Humanistic Knowledge on Contemporary Security Policy

“Source criticism” (källkritik) has become an essential part of the Swedish government’s activities against false information, deception campaigns, and propaganda, which are viewed as fundamentally destabilising forces that can potentially undermine the democratic system, the public debate, and political decision-making. The purpose of this article is to explore source criticism as a technology of government focusing on the Swedish Psychological Defence. I analyse the way in which source criticism is brought to bear on Swedish national security policy in the light of Foucauldian theories about modern governmentality and technologies of the self. Source criticism is seen as an example of a contemporary form of government that entails a redistribution of responsibility from the state to the individual, who is provided with certain “technologies of self” to master an unpredictable political environment. With this case study as empirical example, the aim of the article is to contribute to the research on the influence of humanistic knowledge in security and defence policy domains. This prompts further discussion about what happens with the democratic and critical potential of humanistic knowledge as it is enrolled in government operations.

When Race Was Removed from Racism: Per Engdahl, the Networks that Saved Fascism and the Making of the Concept of Ethnopluralism.

When Race Was Removed from Racism:Per Engdahl, the Networks that Saved Fascism and the Making of the Concept of Ethnopluralism Elisabeth Åsbrink However false, the idea that victory over Germany in 1945 was synonymous with victory over the ideologies behind the war—Nazism and Jew-hatred—has lingered on in media narratives and the collective consciousness. Alongside new moral codes that emerged in the years following the peace—such as the legitimation of democracy, the Nuremberg Code on medical experimentation, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the prevalent slogan "Never Again"—ideologies of hatred developed across complex international networks. With particular attention to Sweden, in this article I will trace how personal and intellectual networks revived Nazi ideas using new words, such as culture, identity, and enthnopluralism. "Swedish Fascism—Why Bother?" asked historian Lena Berggren in 2002, noting that the influence of interwar fascism had been ignored by scholars because the political ideology had indisputably failed in Swedish elections.1 In a notable 1980 article, Bernt Hagtvet focused on various groups (not the ideas) and their fracturing,2 but despite the historian Heléne [End Page 133] Lööw's groundbreaking 1990 dissertation, "Hakkorset och Wasakärven,"3 academic disinterest prevailed for another decade. Still, while it never became a political force within the Swedish party system, nor did it draw crowds of people to the streets, Swedish fascism played a major international role as postwar mediator. One man was particularly instrumental in the survival of Nazi and antisemitic ideologies: the Swedish fascist leader Per Engdahl, originally the leader of Sveriges Fascistiska Kamporganisation, SFKO (Sweden's Fascist Combat Organization), during the 1930s. Engdahl was long gone from public consciousness when my nonfiction book And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain was published in 2011.4 The book offers the account of a Viennese Jewish boy, Otto Ullmann, who was sent to Sweden at age thirteen in February 1939 to escape Nazi persecution and, in 1944, applied for work at the farm estate Elmtaryd in Småland. The farm's owners were the Kamprad family and Otto soon became close friends with the son, Ingvar, who would go on to become the founder of the company Ikea. The Kamprad family was partially Nazi. Ingvar's German grandmother had immigrated from the Sudetenland and rejoiced in its annexation by Hitler in March 1939. His father was "a Nazi in his heart and soul."5 Born in 1926, Ingvar became a member of the Swedish fascist movement before the war and was a great admirer of its leader, Engdahl. In spite of this, Ullmann was hired as a farmhand and friendships were built. When Ingvar started developing Ikea after the war, his best friend Otto was right by his side, working on marketing.6 In an interview published in And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain, Kamprad found it hard to answer the core questions concerning the anomaly of these relationships: How could the Ikea founder remain loyal to the fascist leader and Holocaust denier Engdahl, and, at the same time, be close to his Jewish friend, Otto Ullman? Otto, whose parents were murdered at Auschwitz? Kamprad finally replied: "There's no contradiction as [End Page 134] far as I'm concerned. Per Engdahl was a great man, and I will maintain that as long as I live."7 When I investigated the matter further, I discovered a file on Ingvar Kamprad from 1943 in the Swedish Security Service archive, labeled "Memorandum concerning: Nazi" and stamped "secret" in red ink.8 It states that Kamprad, then seventeen, was Member No. 4014 of Svensk Socialistisk Samling (the Socialist Unity), the leading Swedish Nazi party before and during the war. The Swedish secret police had kept him under surveillance for over eight months, confiscating and reading correspondence in which he wrote that he had recruited "quite a few comrades" and missed no opportunity to work for the movement. The memorandum about his correspondence reached the Sixth Division of the Stockholm police on July 6, 1943. (Six days later, Kamprad sent an application to the county administrative office in Vaxjo to register Ikea.) When the information about Kamprad's membership in Socialist...

SWEDISH COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS AGAINST BRITISH ECONOMIC WARFARE IN SCANDINAVIA, 1939–1940

AbstractThis article examines the Swedish security establishment's counterintelligence measures directed against British preparations for economic warfare in Scandinavia in 1939–40. Although Stockholm was an intense spying location, there exists a gap in the historiography concerning the topic. At the beginning of the war, the British government regarded economic warfare as an efficient tool for shaking the foundations of the German war economy. Economic warfare included blockades, sabotage, psychological warfare, and diplomatic threats. The present study explores Swedish operations against George Binney, who worked for the British government in war-trade-related issues. The article shows that the Swedish security service had difficulties in obtaining intelligence on Binney because of the reliance on casual informants, whose information was imprecise and sometimes misleading. The British succeeded in uncovering some of the Swedish counterintelligence tactics and this led to problems in capturing significant information, for example, via communication monitoring. The Swedish archival sources have added considerable new empirical details regarding British preparations for blockade running in July 1940. The study also shows that British officials operated on very dangerous ground, as some of the individuals they worked with were enemy agents or in a position to forward information in several different directions.

The significance of Hultqvist Doctrine in the Swedish security policy

Sweden is one of the few countries that is guided by the principle of neutrality in its policy. Ensuring national security is one of the priorities of successive governments in Stockholm. The modern world is based on alliances, and states are unable to protect their security effectively. The Swedish security policy aims to achieve a perfect balance between security and neutrality and implements these intentions under the Hultqvist Doctrine.

Expanding learner readiness of young Swedish security officers-to-be in upper secondary school

ABSTRACT Acquiring the conceptual and contextualised vocational knowing of surveillance law that security officers require may pose difficulties for young students due to their inexperience. This article reports research on the learner readiness of 16- to 20-year-old security officers-to-be in Swedish upper secondary vocational education and training with respect to this law. The following research questions are addressed. What surveillance law is experientially emergent for upper secondary students through vocational instruction to become security officers? How is learner readiness with respect to surveillance law expressed in the students’ feedback-making during instruction to become security officers? The analysis is based on participant observations and focus group interviews with 34 students. The main finding is that the students expand their learner readiness with respect to surveillance law as they develop a novel appreciation of surveillance law as a field of interconnected meanings. Students’ knowing of surveillance law emerges through a constant interplay of four processes: addressing a commonsensical sense of justice, formulating action plans, exercising the freedom to abstain from action, and applying for legal protection. Students expand their learner readiness with respect to surveillance law as awareness of: the need to handle personal empowerment appropriately, occupational boundaries, and laws as grids for particular actions.

The Spectrum of Repression: Swedish Muslims\u2019 Experiences of Anti-terrorism Measures

In this qualitative study, I examine, through the lens of repression, Swedish Muslims’ experiences of being targeted by authorities in the latter’s attempts to prevent terrorism. In an effort to comprehend the full force of this repression—as coercion in its physical and violent sense, but also in its more subtle and consensual forms—I interweave various Marxist and postcolonial perspectives. The study discusses internal aspects of repression, as well as its external qualities, expanding our understanding of how repression occurs between bodies and within society. I develop the concept of “repressive consent” as a means of grasping situations in which people are influenced to undertake activities against their will. Empirically, the article focuses on experiences of disproportionate security controls and encounters with the Swedish Security Service (Säpo). The material reveals both painful and everyday consequences. For some individuals, becoming a target in the War on Terror may have, as the informants of the study indicate, devastating consequences; for others, it may feel like a friendly chat.

Employment Protection, Collective Bargaining, and Labour Market Adaptability. The Swedish Employment Security Councils in a Comparative Context

EnglishThe article describes how employment protection legislation and collective bargaining can be used to improve labour market adaptability. A rather detailed account is given of how, in Sweden, rules on dismissals for economic reasons and sectoral collective bargaining have been used to create institutions, the employment security councils, which offer redundant workers assistance in the transition to new jobs, in exchange for increased employer influence over layoffs. The potential exportability of these institutions is analysed as well as the practical use of comparative law in policy making. italianoL’articolo descrive il modo in cui la legislazione lavoristica e la contrattazione collettiva possono essere utilizzate per migliorare l’adattabilita del mercato del lavoro. Si offre un dettagliato resoconto su come, in Svezia, le norme in materia di licenziamenti per ragioni economiche e la contrattazione collettiva di settore siano state utilizzate per creare gli employment security councils, che offrono assistenza ai lavoratori nella transizione da un posto di lavoro all’altro in cambio di un aumento del potere datoriale in materia di licenziamenti. Vengono, inoltre, affrontate le questioni della potenziale esportabilita degli employment security councils e dell’utilizzo pratico del diritto comparato nelle operazioni di policy making.

The impact of new public management through outsourcing on the management of government information

PurposeUsing a case study method, the article investigates the impact New Public Management (NPM), through outsourcing has had on the management of government information at the Swedish Transport Agency. In April 2015 the Agency outsourced its IT-operations to IBM company. Some of the IBM sub-contractors had not been cleared by the Swedish Security Service. This exposed the Agency’s information to risk. By outsourcing the IT operations, the General Director of the Agency deviated from the laws governing government information such as the Swedish Security Protection Act, the Personal Data Act and the Publicity and Secrecy Act.Design/methodology/approachThe researcher has applied a case study method as the investigation focuses on a phenomenon in a real-life setting. The case study method entails the use of past studies, which facilitates the exploration and understanding of a complex issue. The phenomenon under investigation is NPM’s impact, through outsourcing, on the management of public information at the Swedish Transportation Agency.FindingsOutsourcing should be foregone by well-formulated contracts that should put into consideration the management of government information and the involvement of all stakeholders such as records managers/archivists, IT personnel, heads of departments, lawyers and business analysts. Outsourcing risks to compromise the two tenets of democracy that is, accountability and transparency which are central to Swedish public administrations’ operations.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited by the fact that it only presents the views of the archivists. This was, however, purposely done because their voice was missing during the discussions that followed after the data breach scandal had become public knowledge. Additionally, archivists are supposed to play a major role in the management of government information at Swedish institutions. Further research that will involve different categories of employees might give a deeper and better understanding of the impact that NPM, through outsourcing, is having on the management of government information and what implications this might have on issues of trust, transparency and accountability.Practical implicationsThe study demonstrates the need for well-formulated outsourcing contracts that will include information management clauses. It is of crucial importance in a democratic society that access to government information is not compromised as institutions endeavor to achieve efficiency and high-quality service delivery.Social implicationsIt is government information that gives citizens knowledge about the various processes of government institutions. It is therefore of paramount importance that government information is not left in the hands of unauthorized companies that are involved in the outsourcing activity but should be securely managed and guarded, as the opposite might pose privacy and national security challenges and hence undermine the trust that citizens have in government institutions.Originality/valueThe search that the author conducted confirmed paucity in research that discusses issues related to NPM, outsourcing and the management of government information. This paper is therefore a contribution to the discourse from an archives and information management perspective.

Sweden and the issue of NATO membership: exploring a public opinion paradox

ABSTRACTThe past decade has seen substantial shifts in Swedish security policy and major change in the domestic debate about NATO. For the first time, all of the right-of-centre “alliance parties” are calling for a full NATO membership, and popular support for NATO has increased. Yet public opinion contains ambiguities and paradoxes that complicate the picture. At the same time as support for NATO has increased, the public is overwhelmingly for continued military non-alignment. Drawing on previous research, longitudinal data from national surveys, and other sources on defence and security issues, this article aims to increase our understanding of the development and change in Swedish public opinion on NATO. A key argument is that Erving Goffman’s theatre metaphor, combined with neo-institutional decoupling theory, to a large degree can help understand the public opinion paradox.

Meta‐Governance and Collaborative Crisis Management—Competing Rationalities in the Management of the Swedish Security Communications System

It is well recognized that contemporary crisis call for collaborative efforts across both organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. One of the key challenges for governments and public authorities responsible for organizing crisis management is to find adequate ways in which they can support decentralized and collaborative responses. This effort can be analyzed through the meta‐governance approach that suggests that different instruments can be used to support decentralized collaborative efforts. This article analyzes the management of crisis communication in Sweden and the implementation of a new national Security Communications System (SCS) as a specific case of meta‐governance. The main finding suggests that meta‐governance may be impaired by combining different types of governance (sovereignty, markets, or network management) due to competing rationality invested in each governance style. The deadlock was, however, resolved by direct involvement and increased deliberation between the meta‐governors and the end users as it generated a shared understanding of crisis management and the utility of a single SCS. Besides identifying the importance of direct involvement in terms of network management the article also suggests that meta‐governors need to develop a deeper and more sensitive understanding of the self‐organizing nature of networks in order to be able to support collaborative crisis management.

Swedish Counterterrorism Policy: An Intersection Between Prevention and Mitigation?

The aim of this article is to analyze how and why Swedish counterterrorism policy has changed since 2001. It raises the issue of how counterterrorism interacts with other factors on the governmental agenda, which priorities are made, and how these can be understood. Although much empirical evidence on the real political influence of emergent interagency networks is still lacking in the case of Sweden, an attempt is made here to analyze the importance of focusing events. In the light of the Swedish national strategy for counterterrorism, the article analyzes the content of annual reports from the Swedish Security Service. The article also explores linkages between the counterterrorism and crisis management literatures, and argues that the reassuring overtones in Swedish counterterrorism policy of late can be understood not only as the result of changes in threat perception and policy, but also in institutional change.

Countering Threats

The increased adoption of social media has presented security and law enforcement authorities with significant new challenges. For example, the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) asserts that a large proportion of radicalization takes place in open fora online. Still, approaches to contain social media-driven challenges to security, particularly in democratic societies, remain little explored. Nonetheless, this type of knowledge may become relevant in European countries in the near future: Amongst other factors, the challenging economic situation has resulted in increased public discontent leading to emergence or manifestation of groups that seek to challenge the existing policies by almost any means. Use of social media multiplies the number of vectors that need law enforcement attention. First, a high level of social media adaption allows groups to reach and attract a wider audience. Unlike previously, many groups today consist of a large but very loosely connected network. This lack of cohesion can present a challenge for authorities, to identify emerging key actors and assess threat levels. Second, a high level of mobile web penetration has allowed groups to ad-hoc organize, amend plans and redirect physical activities. Third, the tool social media is as not exclusive to potential perpetrators of unlawful action, but is as well available to law enforcement authorities. Yet, efficient utilization of social media requires a deep understanding of its nature and a well-crafted, comprehensive approach. Acknowledging the broad functionality of social media, as well as its current status in the society, this article describes a model process for security authorities and law enforcement work with social media in general and security services work in particular. The process is cyclic and largely modular. It provides a set of goals and tasks for each stage of a potential event, rather than fixed activities. This allows authorities to adapt the process to individual legal frameworks and organization setups. The approach behind the process is holistic where social media is regarded as both source and destination of information. Ultimately, the process aims at efficiently and effectively mitigating the risk of virtual and physical violence.

German and Soviet intelligence activities in Sweden in 1944: Voldemar Blankenfelds and the deportation of Baron Bernd von Gossler

This article addresses the intricate and previously untold story of a German attempt in 1944 to have an agent, the Latvian Voldemar Blankenfelds, dispatched by boat, via Sweden, to South America where a German intelligence network was being established. Shortly after his arrival in Sweden in June 1944, however, Blankenfelds got in touch with the British diplomatic mission in Stockholm, told them of his assignment and became a double agent, maintaining contacts with the Germans while continually providing information to the British, who in turn kept the Swedish police informed. Blankenfelds was later arrested and interrogated by the Swedes and, when released, agreed to provide them with information as well. He thereby significantly contributed to the arrest and extradition of a German agent in Sweden – the Head of the German tourist agency in Sweden, Baron Bernd von Gossler. Blankenfelds’ assignment to America was repeatedly delayed throughout the autumn of 1944 and by late October, Berlin ordered the mission to be called off altogether. In the meantime, the Germans had tried to have Blankenfelds engage in intelligence activities in Sweden aimed at the Baltic refugee community. Blankenfelds refused however to cooperate. Newly declassified Soviet encrypted cables, together with archival material from Blankenfelds’ file in the archive of Swedish security police, reveal striking similarities between German and Soviet intelligence objectives regarding the Baltic refugees in Sweden.

Determinants of Sick Leave Duration Following Occupational Injuries among Workers in the County of Gävleborg, Sweden

Background: Occupational injuries continue to add to the global burden of injuries. Recent global estimates show that up 317 million workers were injured in accidents at work that resulted in absence from work of four days or more. Whereas sick leave is important for rehabilitation and recovery, the duration of sick leave and consequent return to work is of concern in order to prevent negative outcomes. There is therefore a need to examine factors associated with sick leave duration among injured workers for effective rehabilitation. This study aimed to investigate the determinants of leave sick duration following occupational injuries. Method: The Swedish National Working Environment Agency keeps a record of all cases of occupational injuries requiring at least one day sick leave day and reported to Swedish Social Welfare Security Agency. The present study is register based using data from a total of 5291 cases of occupational injuries that occurred in the county of Gavleborg, Sweden between 2007 and 2012. Result: Sick leave longer than two weeks was highest for the self-employed and temporary workers although injury frequency was low for both groups. Fall injuries and injuries involving slip, trip and snapping or breaking of an object were more likely to lead to sick leave longer than two weeks. Shorter sick duration was observed among injured workers in the health and manufacturing sectors. Conclusions: Possible reasons for the observed results and the need for individual based rehabilitation process for effective and more meaningful return to work are discussed.