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CRIME

Mother arrested for murder of infant son

A woman in Linköping in southern Sweden has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of her two-year-old son. The boy was found lifeless in his home by his father.

Published: 8 March 2009 11:52 CET

The child’s mother is now under arrest on suspicion of the murder of her child.

“It was on Friday that the boy was found lifeless in an apartment in central Linköping. He was declared dead on arrival at emergency at Linköping University Hospital,” Mariana Persson at Östergötland police said to news agency TT.

Shortly after the boy was rushed to hospital the 32-year-old mother was arrested. She was later detained by the prosecutor and has been interviewed over the weekend.

“She denies the offences,” confirmed Berit Blick at Linköping police.

The family has no other members other than the two-year-old boy, his mother, and 36-year-old father.

There were no other people present in the apartment when the father came home to find his son dead.

The mother had not by this time called the emergency services, confirmed Berit Blick.

Blick was unwilling to divulge the exact nature of police suspicions nor explain how the police believe the boy was killed.

“We have our ideas, but he is set to undergo an autopsy and I don’t want to speculate.”

Blick was unwilling to confirm whether either the mother or the father had previously been reported to the authorities.

Both the mother and the father are reported to be in a poor mental state. The father has received help from psychiatrists at the hospital.

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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