@misc{9228021,
  abstract     = {{Act (2024:1180) on Anonymous Witnesses in Criminal Cases entered into force January 1, 2025, after many years of official reports and debates. The act enables witnesses to be able to be heard anonymous during the pre-trial investigation and during the trial in court under certain conditions.
The Act is intended to combat gang crime and to break the cultures of silence that exist within criminal groups. It is also intended to protect witnesses and encourage more people to come forward and testify in court and thereby pros-ecute more individuals who commit serious crimes. However, defense attor-neys believe that the legislation will lead to unreasonable expectations of being able to testify anonymously, which in turn will have the opposite effect, name-ly that it will lead to fewer crimes being solved and witnesses will instead claim that they do not remember the incident. 
The system of anonymous witnesses’ risks disregarding certain fundamental rights that exist for the accused or the defendant, including the right to a fair trial and the right to an effective defense in accordance with the ECHR. The defense attorney has to, among other things, invoke evidence or circumstances that are in favor of the client, an important part of which is to attack the relia-bility of the witness and create doubts in the court. When a witness is anony-mous, it becomes more difficult for the defense to attack the reliability when the identity and the motive cannot be established. This can limit the possibili-ties of effectively responding to the testimony and the circumstances that are raised. 
This essay aims to examine how the defense attorneys’ mission towards his client and in a legal process is affected by the new system of anonymous wit-nesses. I also examine what legal security problems there are, both from a defense attorneys’ perspective and in general from av constitutional principles perspective.
In addition, I analyze and discuss how anonymous witnesses have been used so far, both in Sweden and other countries. Since the possibility of using an anonymous witness has not yet been used in Sweden, I analyze what I believe the future will look like with the new law. Since Sweden, in comparison with other countries in Europe, is late in introducing such a possibility, I also very briefly compare how it has been used in other countries with how it is intend-ed to be used in Sweden.}},
  author       = {{Tagesson, Saga}},
  language     = {{swe}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Anonyma vittnen och rätt till försvar En analys av försvarsadvokatens roll i rättsprocessen}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}