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ARBOGA MURDER TRIAL

CRIME

Suspect’s friend: ‘There was no baby’

A friend of child murder suspect Christine Schürrer testified on Monday that he did not believe the 32-year-old German woman had given birth to a child last September as she has claimed.

Published: 11 August 2008 17:02 CEST

Schürrer’s friend said he was first introduced to the suspect in spring of last year. The pair continued to meet up sporadically during the summer.

Testifying in court on the seventh day of the trial, Schürrer’s friend said he had no recollection of the alleged pregnancy, which has also been called into question by a number of other witnesses. He said he did not believe she was close to giving birth to a child at this stage last year.

“I doubt it because as far as I remember she wasn’t pregnant. If she gave birth to the child in September it would have been visible,” said Schürrer’s friend when questioned by prosecutor Johan Fahlander.

The suspect claims that she had a child fathered by her ex-boyfriend Torgny Hellberg.

It was Hellberg who discovered the bloodied bodies of his girlfriend Emma Jangestig and her two toddlers, Saga and Max, on the floor of the home they shared in Arboga in March of this year.

Several months after their break up, Schürrer sent a letter to Hellberg explaining that she had given birth to his child and given it up for adoption.

Schürrer’s friend also called into question another aspect of her testimony. He said he was not aware that she had a special interest in Swedish history and had never spoken of visiting ancient Swedish monuments, which Schürrer has said was her reason for visiting Arboga on the day of the murders.

“The topics we spoke mostly about were football and music,” he told the court.

On March 17th, the day of the murders, Schürrer borrowed 1,000 kronor ($156) from her friend. She picked up the money from his place of work but did not say that she planned travelling to Arboga.

Earlier on Monday, a number of Emma Jangestig’s neighbours testified that they had seen a person behaving strangely outside her house and on her driveway on the day of the attacks. The person in question was wearing a large hood and has not been identified by any of the witnesses as Christine Schürrer.

The trial is set to continue in Tuesday when more of Schürrer’s friends will be called as 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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