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CRIME

Boy suspected of brutal murder of 81-year-old man

A 16-year-old boy has been indicted for the December murder of an 81-year-old man in southern Sweden.

Published: 1 February 2008 18:06 CET

The boy was arrested on December 27th, the evening after the 81-year-old’s body was found in a lake near his home in a small community south of Sävsjö.

The 16-year-old stands accused of beating his victim repeatedly over the head with a rock before pushing his body into a lake outside the 81-year-old’s house.

The boy has admitted to the attack but denies that he intended to kill the man.

On Christmas Day, he said, he came into possession of the keys to the 81-year-old’s car, which he planned to steal.

The next evening, the boy was spotted by the elderly man as he made his way towards the 81-year-old’s vehicle. The man accused him of taking his car keys and threatened to call the police.

“The suspect then decided to run after the man and push him over. He found a rock, with which he dealt the man several blows to the head,” said police spokesman Christer Edlund.

After the attack, the boy dragged his victim to the water’s edge and splashed water in his face. When he did not detect a reaction, the boy shoved the 81-year-old into the water.

That evening, concerned members of the 81-year-old’s family contacted police to report his disappearance. When the news spread that the man was missing, the 16-year-old boy joined the search party.

The man’s body was found under a jetty at around 1am the next morning. The following day, the boy was taken in for questioning after his name was mentioned by several witnesses.

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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