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CRIME

Man stabbed on board Swedish train

A man is in critical condition after being stabbed in the stomach on a train between Stockholm and Hallsberg.

Published: 23 April 2017 13:37 CEST
Man stabbed on board Swedish train
File photo: Tobias Röstlund/TT

Police were able to apprehend the suspect, who ran from the train when it was stopped due to the incident.

The stabbing was reported to police at 7:49pm on Saturday by several people on board the regional train from near the town of Bålsta, according to news agency TT.

“We received a call to Bålsta Station. A man is believed to have been stabbed in the stomach and he has been taken by ambulance to hospital,” Matilda Isaksson, officer in command at Uppsala Police coordination centre, told TT.

The train was stopped by police request at Bålsta – not a scheduled stop for the service – when a man attempted to escape across the platform but was apprehended shortly afterwards, reports the agency.

He is now held by police under suspicion of attempted murder.

“We are now carrying out investigations of the scene,” Isaksson said.

A number of witnesses to the incident were on board the train and will be interviewed by police, reports TT. One witness told tabloid newspapers Expressen and Aftonbladet that the man became violent after he was found to be travelling without a ticket, turning his anger on a passenger sitting adjacent who had become involved in the situation.

The man who was stabbed sustained serious injuries but is in a stable condition, according to a report from Uppsala University Hospital.

Police have taken the relevant train carriages out of service as evidence and they were moved away from the platform at Bålsta. Sweden’s transport administration (Trafikverket) reported no delays on the affected section of track after 10:30pm Saturday.

Staff on board the train were sent home from work and all passengers were taken to their destinations by alternative means, Anders Edgren, press officer with Swedish rail operator SJ, told TT.

READ ALSO: Sweden's new lethal violence stats for 2016 analysed

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.

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