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CRIME

Police: ‘Murdered woman met suspected killer over the internet’

A 25-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of a 22-year-old woman found dead in an apartment in Hjo in western Sweden on Friday afternoon. Police report that the couple met over the internet.

Published: 26 July 2008 12:19 CEST

“The woman has been subjected to serious violence,” said Lars Johansson at Skövde police to news agency TT.

The woman was found by a relative. Her three-year-old daughter was in the apartment when police arrived at the apartment.

The 25-year-old man held on suspicion of murder is already known to the police. He is a resident of a town in Västra Götaland county in western Sweden.

“We know that there is a link between the man and the dead woman. They have been in contact over the internet. We are working on a theory that explains the motive of the crime, but I do not want to go in to specifics,” Johansson said.

The police investigation continues on Saturday. The woman’s apartment was examined by police technicians on Saturday morning and the police confirmed plans to interview several more people during the course of the weekend.

The 22-year-old victim is not previously known to the police.

Her three-year-old daughter is now in the care of relatives.

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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