The men have been part of the investigation for some time, but suspicions recently became strong enough to prompt prosecutors to seek a remand order at the district court in Alingsås on Monday morning.

“Our interest was piqued a few days into the investigation and since then we had our suspicions confirmed by interviews and forensic evidence,” chief prosecutor Urban Svenkvist told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

Now that a remand order has been granted, prosecutors plant to issue an international arrest warrant for the two men.

According to Svenkvist, the two men, both of whom are foreigners, are likely out of the country.

“We’re operating on the assumption that they are,” he told the TT news agency.

The two men are suspected of carrying out the brutal murders of an elderly couple who operated a dairy farm in the village of Långared.

“They’ve been brutally executed,” county police chief Thord Haraldsson told the Aftonbladet newspaper at the time of the killings.

The couple, 69-year-old dairy farmer Torgny Antby and his 71-year-old wife Inger, were found dead on October 19th after failing to turn up for a performance with the local choir, scheduled for that afternoon.

Two members of the choir then traveled to the couple’s home to see if they had become sick or run into trouble only to discovered the farmer’s body.

When police arrived, they found the woman’s body in the farm’s main residence.

According to prosecutors, the 69-year-old man was killed after being repeatedly struck in the head with a hard object, while the 71-year-old woman died of strangulation.

Both victims had been tied up and had tape wrapped around their heads and faces.

The two suspects are also believed to have stolen a safe from the couple’s home.

Two other men who had previously been held during the investigation’s early stages on suspicion of carrying out the double murder have since been excluded from the ongoing probe.

A third man was also arrested on suspicion of harbouring a criminal but has also been released.

Details about the new suspects have been kept confidential. All that prosecutor Svenkvist will say is that the suspects are two foreign men.

“The reason we’re keeping their identities confidential is so that we don’t want someone to get to these men before police,” he told Aftonbladet.

“This is the most serious crime that’s occurred in this area for many years.”