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Six jailed over murder of woman in Dalarna

Six people were on Friday sentenced to jail in connection with the murder of a 61-year-old woman.

Published: 10 February 2017 14:56 CET
Updated: 10 February 2017 17:21 CET
Six jailed over murder of woman in Dalarna
The woman's body was found near Långshyttan in Dalarna. Photo: Niklas Hagman/TT

The woman disappeared after a barbecue party near the village of Långshyttan in the rural Dalarna region last summer. She was found dead two weeks later in a water-filled mine shaft.

Falu District Court found four people guilty of murder. Newspaper Expressen reports that it sentenced Joakim Hessling, 26, who stabbed the victim, to 17 years in jail.

Daniel Viberg Wahlgren, 21, and Martin Broling, 24, were sentenced to 16 years in jail. Benita Hokkanen was handed a shorter punishment – 12 years – because she was only 20 at the time the murder was committed.

Two people – Per-Olov Höflinger, 46, and Mats Hedin, 45 – were found guilty of complicity in murder and sentenced to ten years in jail.

Another three women were convicted of failing to reveal murder, one woman was freed of all charges and one man was convicted of “less serious crimes”, wrote the court in a statement.

The court heard that the victim had lent money to some of the people charged, who did not appreciate her attempts to get the money back. In mid-June last year they decided to kill her.

They invited her to a barbecue party at a lake. Afterwards, they sat down in a car where some of them strangled her with a rope while singing along to the song 'Forever Angel' on the car stereo.

She was eventually stabbed to death after they noticed she was still breathing. The body was wrapped in plastic and thrown down the mine shaft. The group then used her bank card to make several purchases and took items from her apartment, reports Swedish news agency TT.

The lawyers for Broling, Hessling and Wahlgren told the newswire that they would likely appeal the sentence. None of the other people's lawyers immediately commented on whether or not they would appeal.

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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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