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CRIME

Officers charged for assaulting whistleblower

Two police officers have been charged for assaulting a young man who used his mobile phone camera to film them roughing up two suspects in a Stockholm metro station.

Published: 22 October 2010 16:16 CEST
Officers charged for assaulting whistleblower

According to the indictment, the police officers had threatened to report him on harassment and drug charges if he did not delete the pictures from his mobile phone. They also pressed him up against a wall and snatched his mobile phone from him.

The event became notorious after the young man uploaded a reconstructed film of the incident on YouTube.

The two policemen have been charged for harassment, arbitrary conduct and unlawful restraint or misconduct.

The young man was photographing the police officers in connection with their conduct in verifying the identity of two people in the Hornstull subway station.

The man wanted to expose what he believed to be the use of undue force by the officers.

The prosecutor has called several witnesses to testify about the police officers’ behaviour in connection with the incident. He has also referred to the young man’s reconstructed film from the mobile phone camera.

Following the incident, the policemen reported the amateur photographer for aggravated defamation, insults and harassment and assault of a police officer.

According to the man’s lawyer Björn Sandin, he is not under suspicion for the crimes.

Chief prosecutor Christer Ekelund wrote in the indictment that the district court should get ask for an assessment of the officers from the police personnel disciplinary board, which determines what disciplinary measures to administer to offending officers.

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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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