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CRIME

Identity of murdered girl remains uncertain

Police have not yet been able to confirm the identity of a young woman found murdered in Mora in central Sweden on Monday.

Published: 19 February 2008 14:04 CET
Identity of murdered girl remains uncertain

The injuries sustained by the girl are believed to have made an identification impossible prior to the release of autopsy results expected on Wednesday.

Police have no suspects in the case.

Only after a post mortem examination will police be able to ascertain how the girl was killed and whether she was subjected to a sexual assault.

The girl was almost completely naked when her body was discovered by construction workers in Mora. The body was found hidden under insulation materials located behind a storage container.

Investigators are working on the theory that the victim may have been a 15-year-old girl who was reported missing from her home in the town on Saturday.

The girl was last seen alive at 7pm on Friday when a family member dropped her off at a bus stop in Mora. Her father had been expecting her to pay him a visit in Älvdalen but his daughter never arrived.

A thorough search of the girl’s computer revealed that she sometimes arranged meetings with people she came into contact with on the internet.

“We are now trying to find out if she made an appointment with somebody on Friday,” said police spokesman Sven-Åke Petters.

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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