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CRIME

Murder probe explores World of Warcraft ties

Prosecutors are looking into what role the popular online adventure game World of Warcraft may have played in the weekend death of a woman in a Stockholm suburb.

Published: 24 November 2009 13:00 CET
Murder probe explores World of Warcraft ties

Police discovered the body of Erika Eriksson on Sunday morning in an apartment located in Spånga west of Stockholm.

A 33-year-old man from Sandviken in eastern Sweden who was in the apartment when police arrived has been detained on suspicions of murder.

The night before, Eriksson, a native of Arvika in central Sweden, had been celebrating her 28th birthday with friends.

She had moved into the sublet apartment a week earlier in order to look for work in the Stockholm area.

Most of the friends celebrating with Eriksson last Saturday night knew each other through their common interest in World of Warcraft.

“We understand that several of those who were there had the World of Warcraft computer game as a common interest,” prosecutor Christina Voigt told the Nya Wermlands-Tidningen (NWT) newspaper.

Speaking with the Metro newspaper, Voigt added that the game and how it may have figured in the killing is now an important part of the investigation.

“We know there are connections and it’s something we’re looking into,” she told Metro.

Police confirm that the suspect and the victim were acquainted, but refuse to elaborate on the duration or nature of the relationship or on the cause of death.

“They knew each other, but we’re not going to get into how or why she was killed,” said police spokesperson Mats Eriksson to Metro.

But an acquaintance of Eriksson confirmed for NWT that she and the 33-year-old knew one another and that they met recently as a result of playing World of Warcraft.

Initial reports indicated Eriksson had been strangled, but police refuse to confirm the exact cause of death, the Arbetarbladet newspaper reports.

The suspect is set to be interrogated further on Tuesday, at which time prosecutors will decide whether to seek a remand order against him.

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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