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CRIME

Two shot in photo studio robbery

Two men were taken to hospital with leg injuries after a shooting incident at a photo studio in central Stockholm on Friday afternoon.

Published: 18 January 2008 16:04 CET

Police were called to Norra Stationsgatan in the Vasastan area of the city shortly after 3pm after three masked men staged a raid on a photo studio. The men left the premises after stealing a small safe.

“Something went wrong during the men’s stay on the premises and two men were shot,” police spokesman Joakim Caryll told TT.

Police said that one of the men was shot in the thigh, while the other received wounds to the calf. Both were taken to hospital to be treated for their injuries.

Witnesses say they saw three masked men fleeing the scene after loading the safe into an old, red Audi.

“There were a lot of witnesses to the incident as the photo studio is located beside a shopping centre,” said Caryll.

A number of police units have been called in to aid in the search. Witnesses are being asked to make contact with the police.

“If anybody sees the suspected vehicle they should call 112. As the men were armed, we are treating them as dangerous,” said Caryll.

CRIME

Sweden charges Islamic State woman in landmark trial

Swedish prosecutors said they have brought genocide charges against a woman in the country's first court case over crimes committed by the Islamic State group against the Yazidi minority.

Published: 20 September 2024 07:15 CEST
Sweden charges Islamic State woman in landmark trial

A prosecutor told AFP the 52-year-old woman was accused of keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria between 2014 and 2016.

She was charged with “genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes” on the grounds that her actions formed part of a broader campaign by the group (IS or Isis) against the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority.

The woman, who is a Swedish citizen, is in jail having already been sentenced by a Swedish court to six years in prison in 2022 for allowing her 12-year-old son to be recruited as a child soldier for Isis.

Senior prosecutor Reena Devgun told AFP that while investigating that case, authorities had received witness reports “that told us that she had kept slaves in Raqqa,” the former stronghold of the Islamic State group in northern Syria, prompting further investigations.

“If you take in Yazidis into your household when you are an Isis member or the wife of an Isis member and treat them this way, I argue that you are participating” in the broader campaign against them, Devgun said.

Devgun said the woman had kept nine people, three women and six children, in her home “as slaves”.

The women and children – who were kept in the house for between 20 days and seven months – were among other things made to perform household tasks.

Devgun said they had also been photographed, which the prosecutor argued “was done with the intention that they would be sold off”.

Evidence had mainly been gathered through witness accounts, from the victims and others that had visited the home at the time.

The crimes, which the woman denies, can carry a life sentence in Sweden.

Stockholm’s District Court said in a statement that the trial was scheduled to start on October 7th and was expected to last two months.

Around 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined IS in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to Sweden’s intelligence service Säpo.

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