Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Why Swedish ‘summer cottage murder’ woman will likely spend life in prison: legal expert

A woman accused of killing her father with the help of her boyfriend and instigating the murder of her ex-husband did not have a serious mental disorder, according to a psychiatric examination.

Published: 25 July 2017 12:55 CEST
Why Swedish 'summer cottage murder' woman will likely spend life in prison: legal expert
Johanna Möller in court. Photo: Vilhelm Stokstad/TT

Västmanland District Court said last month that 42-year-old Johanna Möller and her ex-boyfriend Mohammad Rajabi are likely to be convicted of murder and attempted murder, as well as instigation of murder for the former, but ordered the pair to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before pronouncing a verdict.

Experts have now concluded that neither of the accused committed the acts under the influence of a serious psychiatric disorder, which means the court is able to sentence them to jail rather than psychiatric care.

The court is expected to convene on August 7th when the prosecutor will put forward her final case, and the verdict and sentence are then expected to be pronounced around a fortnight later.

READ ALSO: Everything you need to know about the Swedish murder case that's stranger than fiction


The summer house in Arboga. Photo: TT

Möller is likely to be sentenced to jail, commented legal expert Sven-Erik Alhem.

“If the district court finds her guilty on all counts, which it looks like it will, there's more than one murder, first of all. There's also the attempted murder which she has been part of. It is my personal view that that can't lead to anything other than a life sentence,” he told TT.

Rajabi's sentence is not as clear-cut, Alhem told the news agency.

“There is a possibility that he has been affected by her. He is also young. It is harder to judge but I would imagine it would be a fixed-term sentence,” he said.

Möller and Rajabi have both been remanded in custody since last September over what has been called the “summer cottage murders” in Swedish media. The name comes from the scene where the crimes took place, a summer house in Arboga, central Sweden.

It was there in August 2016 that Möller's father was killed in a stabbing, while her mother was seriously injured. Her former husband, meanwhile, was found drowned near the same cottage a year before – a drowning which was treated as an accident at the time.

Västmanland District Court has not formally convicted the pair, but has said Möller is guilty of murdering her father, attempting to murder her mother and instigating the murder of her husband. It also considers Rajabi, who has already confessed to the crimes against the parents, guilty of murder and attempted murder.

Möller insists she is innocent. In July she sent a letter to Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, writing that her mother, sister and eldest daughter had “stabbed her in the back” during the trial. Her daughter told the trial among other things that Möller had asked her to help kill her husband with a baseball bat.

The 42-year-old is also accused of a series of additional crimes, including a fraud charge and allegations she attempted to bribe a prison office and threatened public servants.

For members

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.”

SHOW COMMENTS