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CRIME

Man held for setting ex-wife on fire

A 51-year-old man has been remanded into custody after setting fire to his ex-wife in Gävle in eastern Sweden.

Published: 13 October 2009 17:38 CEST

According to prosecutors, the man attempted to murder the 31-year-old woman by burning her to death. She remains in hospital with burns over 80 percent of her body, the Aftonbladet newspaper reports.

The man and his ex-wife, as well as three children were all injured in the fire, which took place in an apartment on the night of Saturday, October 3rd.

Details of the blaze, described as “explosive”, remain sketchy, with one neighbour telling Aftonbladet there was a smell of flammable liquid in the building’s stairwell.

The two adults are being treated at Uppsala University Hospital for serious burn injuries. The children, two of which were fathered by the 51-year-old, received only minor injuries.

Police were initially unable to say what caused the fire, but were able to question the 51-year-old man a few days later.

On Tuesday, the man was remanded into custody on suspicions of attempted murder, although he denies the accusations.

“The woman is still in serious condition and her prognosis remains uncertain,” prosecutor Birgitta Fernlund told the TT news agency.

Fernlund said that the couple recently divorced, but she wouldn’t say anything about possible motives for the crime.

The remand hearing was held at the hospital because the man also remains in need of treatment for his injuries.

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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