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CRIME

Woman admits murder after body found in Dalarna

A 20-year-old woman has confessed killing a woman in her sixties in the Dalarna region in central Sweden.

Published: 4 July 2016 14:53 CEST
Woman admits murder after body found in Dalarna
Police investigating at Långshyttan, Dalarna. Photo: Niklas Hagman/TT

Four out of eight people arrested by police were remanded in custody on Sunday in connection to the suspected murder of a woman found dead near a stream in Långshyttan in Hedemora municipality.

One of them, a 20-year-old woman, admitted killing the older victim according to court documents seen by regional newspaper Dalarnas Tidning (DT). Her lawyer declined to comment when approached by the daily.

A 22-year-old man told Mora District Court that he had helped plan the alleged murder. However, he said he had then had second thoughts and left the scene before “the crime was started or completed”, reported DT.

A third man, 44, who was also remanded in custody on suspicion of murder, denied the allegations.

A 24-year-old man is understood to have confessed to being linked in part to the woman's death.

“He has admitted that he was involved, but I don't want to go into detail on what he admits. There will be an extensive investigation with many interrogations, and it will become a bit more clear what his role was,” his lawyer Carl-Oscar Morgården told the paper.

A total of eight people form part of the investigation, suspected of various degrees of involvement, including harbouring a criminal, accessory to murder and murder. Police initially arrested seven, but an eighth person handed himself over to officers on Sunday.

The woman was reported missing on June 28th by relatives in Borlänge and, after an initial investigation, police became convinced the woman had been murdered. They would not expand on why, but do not believe the victim was killed where she was found.

“There were many people involved, and it has been a long time, we think, since the crime was committed, so we have many places to explore,” said a police spokesman on Sunday.

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POLITICS

Sweden Democrat justice committee chair steps down over hate crime suspicion

The Sweden Democrat head of parliament’s justice policy committee, Richard Jomshof, has stepped down pending an investigation into hate crimes.

Published: 13 September 2024 13:33 CEST
Updated: 13 September 2024 14:38 CEST
Sweden Democrat justice committee chair steps down over hate crime suspicion

Jomshof told news site Kvartal’s podcast that he had been called to questioning on Tuesday next week, where he’s been told he is to be formally informed he is suspected of agitation against an ethnic or national group (hets mot folkggrupp), a hate crime.

Prosecutor Joakim Zander confirmed the news, but declined to comment further.

“I can confirm what Jomshof said. He is to be heard as suspected on reasonable grounds of agitation against an ethnic or national group,” he told the TT newswire.

“Suspected on reasonable grounds” (skäligen misstänkt) is Sweden’s lower degree of suspicion, compared to the stronger “probable cause” (på sannolika skäl misstänkt).

The investigation relates to posts by other accounts which Jomshof republished on the X platform on May 28th.

One depicts a Muslim refugee family who is welcomed in a house which symbolises Europe, only to set the house on fire and exclaim “Islam first”. The other shows a Pakistani refugee who shouts for help and is rescued by a boat which symbolises England. He then attacks the family who helped him with a bat labelled “rape jihad”, according to TT.

Jomshof has stepped down from his position as chair of the justice committee while he’s under investigation.

“I don’t want this to be about my chairmanship of the committee, I don’t want the parties we collaborate with to get these questions again about whether or not they have confidence in me, but I want this to be about the issue at hand,” he said.

“The issue is Islamism, if you may criticise it or not, and that’s about free speech.”

It’s not the first time Jomshof has come under fire for his comments on Islam.

Last year, he called the Prophet Mohammed a “warlord, mass murderer, slave trader and bandit” in another post on X, sparking calls from the opposition for his resignation.

The Social Democrats on Friday urged Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, whose Moderate-led government relies on the Sweden Democrats’ support, not to let Jomshof return to the post as chair of the justice committee.

“The prime minister is to be the prime minister for the people as a whole,” said Ardalan Shekarabi, the Social Democrat deputy chairman of the justice committee, adding that it was “sad” that Jomshof had ever been elected chairman in the first place.

“When his party supports a person with clear extremist opinions, on this post, there’s no doubt that the cohesion of our society is damaged and that the government parties don’t stand up against hate and agitation,” TT quoted Shekarabi as saying.

Liberal party secretary Jakob Olofsgård, whose party is a member of the government but is seen as the coalition party that’s the furthest from the Sweden Democrats, wrote in a comment to TT: “I can say that I think it is reasonable that Richard Jomshof chooses to quit as chairman of the justice committee pending this process.”

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