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OFFBEAT

Out-of-hours police turn away murder suspect

A 45-year-old man wanted in connection with the 2011 killing of a gang leader in Malmö tried to turn himself in on Monday, only to be told that the local police station was closed.

Out-of-hours police turn away murder suspect

He has been on the run since a warrant was issued for his arrest just days after the November 2011 killing of the 31-year-old leader of the Brödraskapet Wolfpack gang (‘The Wolfpack Brotherhood’).

The suspected mobster was shot to death at a taxi depot in a Malmö industrial area and the 45-year-old, who had previously owned the taxi business, immediately came under suspicion.

But when the suspect finally showed up at a Malmö police station on Monday night to turn himself in after nearly 15 months at large, he was amazed by the response he received, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported.

Upon ringing the bell on the door shortly after 6pm, he was informed that the police station was closed.

“Closed? I’m suspected of murder and a wanted man – you guys really want to get ahold of me,” he said into the intercom.

But instead of being let in to the station, he was instead directed to another police station. When he had made his way there, he was placed under arrest.

Swedish criminal justice expert Sven-Erik Alhem expressed his shock at how the Malmö police handled the wanted man’s attempt to turn himself in.

“It seems really strange and totally bizarre that he was told to go away when he’s suspected of murder. He must have been very confused,” Alhem told the Expressen newspaper.

Alhem added that, at the very least, an officer should have been sent down when the suspect turned up at the first police station.

The suspect’s lawyer was also critical of law enforcement authorities in Sweden for how they handled his client’s wishes to return to Sweden.

“It’s a little strange that a person who has been a suspect for such a long time and even expressed a strong wish to come home doesn’t get help but is required to come home on his own despite the existence of an arrest warrant,” defence attorney Gunnar Falk told the Kvällsposten tabloid.

His client maintains his innocence, telling Sydsvenskan he had “nothing to do” with the gang leader’s killing, which the Swedish media has dubbed the Malmö “taxi murder”.

“I’d be an idiot to come back otherwise,” he continued.

He is scheduled to attend a remand hearing on Thursday.

When asked why a man suspected of murder was turned away by the police station, a Malmö police commander cited ongoing renovations as one possible explanation.

“Things are a bit messy right now,” Anders Oxelbrand told Sydsvenskan.

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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.

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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