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CRIME

‘My tenant turned my home into a brothel’

A Swedish woman has detailed the horrible experience of how her apartment was used as a brothel while she was away on holiday.

Published: 14 September 2016 10:52 CEST
'My tenant turned my home into a brothel'
A file photo of Stockholm apartments not related to the story. Photo: Hasse Holmberg/TT

When Kerstin Söderberg was due to travel to India for two months at the start of this year she decided that it was better for her Stockholm apartment to be of some use instead of it lying empty. After putting an ad on popular Swedish website Blocket, she found an English-speaking couple she thought she could trust. Unfortunately she was wrong. 

“I rented it out to a couple who I put my faith in,” Söderberg told The Local. “But while I was in India a neighbour contacted me to say that it wasn’t them who lived there anymore and that she had seen a man creeping into the apartment. I contacted the police and they went and discovered what was happening.”

What was happening was that the couple she rented the apartment out to had rented it out again in turn, and the new occupants were using it as a brothel.

When the owner returned home from her trip to India she discovered that, among other things, her sofa had been ruined, the apartment smelled of cigarette smoke, and condoms had been left stuck to the walls and under the bed. Several of her possessions were also missing.

“Even though I done everything officially and got the permission I needed I didn’t get any help from insurance to fix it because I had handed over the keys to the people myself. It has cost me thousands to deal with all the damage and the cleaning,” she explained.

Söderberg filed a police report about the incident, but said she isn’t confident that any progress has been made.

“Every time I ring them up the person who is dealing with the case has changed, and it doesn’t seem that anything has happened. I had a look myself and there’s loads of information on the couple showing they had been previously linked to other crimes. Despite finding all of that, their Facebook website and other things, it feels like the police haven’t done a thing.”

Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter managed to contact one of the officers involved in the case, who told them that the investigation is still ongoing.

Söderberg said she wouldn’t rent her apartment out again in the future unless it was to someone she knew.

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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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