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CRIME

Police divers find second arm in Køge Bay

Danish police on Wednesday said divers have found a second arm in the area where the rest of Swedish journalist Kim Wall's body parts were discovered after she was killed on board amateur engineer Peter Madsen’s submarine.

Published: 29 November 2017 17:10 CET
Police divers find second arm in Køge Bay
Copenhagen Police lead investigator Jens Møller Jensen. File photo: Tariq Mikkel Khan/Polfoto/Ritzau

The second arm, found in Køge Bay off Copenhagen, had been weighed down in a similar way as a left arm found last week, Copenhagen Police said in a statement.

“We therefore assume that the arm is connected to the submarine case,” Copenhagen police chief investigator Jens Møller Jensen said in the statement.

Jensen also said the second arm had been found “within 100 metres” of the first and close to the route police have now confirmed the submarine to have followed on the night of Kim Wall’s death.

While both arms have yet to be confirmed to belong to Wall, Jensen told AFP that “the assumption is that all of (her) body parts have (now) been found”.

“First and foremost, this has ethical significance for Kim Wall’s family. They are now able to bury a whole person,” the inspector told media on Wednesday.

READ ALSO: Divers find arm in search for Kim Wall's remains

Kim Wall was killed after interviewing Danish inventor Peter Madsen, 46, on his homemade submarine on August 10th.

Wall's legs, torso and head, all found near Køge Bay, had also been weighed down with attached metal objects.

Madsen, who in October admitted dismembering Wall's corpse, is suspected of murdering her.

But he has denied the allegations and said he does not know how she died.

He has told police she died below deck while he was up on deck.

During an earlier hearing at Copenhagen City Court, police stated that forensic examination of Wall’s torso had confirmed 14 stab wounds to her abdomen. It is not clear whether these injuries were sustained before or after her death.

The next court hearing regarding Madsen’s ongoing preliminary detention is scheduled for December 13th and his trial is set to begin on March 8th 2018.

READ ALSO: Why The Local chose to report the Kim Wall case the way we did

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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