Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Man didn’t kill friend but did dump body: court

A 28-year-old man sentenced to 12 years in prison in April for murdering his best friend has had his conviction overturned on appeal, but was nevertheless found guilty of having thrown the victim's body in a sewer.

Published: 18 June 2012 15:57 CEST

In April, the man was convicted of murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison by the Blekinge District Court for killing his best friend and dumping the body in a sewer.

On Monday, however, the man was acquitted of the murder charge by a Malmö appeals court.

However, the court nevertheless found him guilty of disturbing the peace of the dead and sentenced him to 18 months in prison.

“The reasoning behind the verdict of disturbing the peace of the dead is because he is said to have transported the body in his car, among other things, but there were no traces of this,” said Christer Holmqvist, the man’s lawyer, to the TT news agency.

After the victim’s death in August last year, there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of evidence against the 28-year-old.

He confessed to the murder in letters to his family, had kept personal notes of the killing, and had even searched the internet for murder penalties.

During his district court trial, however, the man retracted his confession.

According to the man’s lawyer, there was “a lack of evidence” in the case, an assessment shared by the appeals court, which duly overturned the murder conviction.

The court found that the 28-year-old’s description of the killing was “patently weak and lacking in detail”. There was no other evidence implicating the 28-year-old in the killing, aside from a letter to his parents explaining that he had taken someone’s life.

However, the court found the 28-year-old description of how he moved the dead body to be detailed and substantial and that, combined with the other circumstances lead it to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the 28-year-old had moved the body of his dead 23-year-old friend.

Despite the drastic reduction in prison time, the 28-year-old was nevertheless disappointed with the ruling, having expected to be freed of all charges.

“He has a truly special personality,” said Holmqvist.

“He is easily influenced. It is also clear from the psychiatric exam that he is easily influenced when he feels pressured. This may be, in other words, an explanation as to why he confessed to being guilty.”

TT/The Local/og

twitter.com/thelocalsweden

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS