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CRIME

Young man gets nine years for murder

A 19-year-old man was sentenced on Monday to nine years in prison after shooting a man to death and burning the body in a Stockholm suburb.

Published: 6 July 2009 14:35 CEST

The body was found in a garage in the neighbourhood of Skärholmen in west Stockholm in January.

The 19-year-old was found guilty of murder, aggravated arson and disturbing the peace of the dead (brott mot griftefrid) by Södertörn district court.

The seriousness of the crime is such that the 19-year-old would have been sentenced to life in prison had he been older, the court said in its judgement. He had not yet turned 19 when he committed the crime. Police found a pair of shoes and a pair of gloves with blood traces from the victim at the 19-year-old’s residence.

The 36-year-old was shot twice in a cellar connected to the property and was then placed in the back seat of a car the 19-year-old ignited with petrol. The court stated that the 19-year-old must have had help to move the body, but it has not proved possible to discover who else might have been involved.

A 21-year-old man, who was charged as an accessory to arson, is thought to have purchased a container of petrol and given it to the 19-year-old. The court did not, however, find beyond a reasonable doubt that the 21-year-old knew what the petrol was to be used for and he was subsequently acquitted.

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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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