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CRIME

14-year-old girl suspected over teenager’s death in western Sweden

A 14-year-old girl is suspected of causing another teenager's death at a residential care home in Trollhätten, western Sweden.

Published: 16 November 2018 07:57 CET
14-year-old girl suspected over teenager's death in western Sweden
The incident took place in Trollhättan. File photo: Johan Nilsson / TT

The girl was questioned by authorities on Thursday after an argument at the HVB care-home the previous day led to a 17-year-old girl being taken to hospital, where she later died.

“I can't say that she confessed, but she gave information which together with other witness statements gave us a very good picture,” said prosecutor Robert Beckard. “Everything points to it being a knife wound which led to the 17-year-old's death.”

Speaking to the TT newswire, he could not share any further details about how the incident unfolded or any possible motive.

The girl is being investigated for murder or manslaughter but due to her age, she will not be tried as an adult.

“It is an extremely serious incident so we really have to investigate what happened and whether we could have acted in any way. Of course we're looking into it,” the head of the care home told local paper GT. 

Criminologist Mikael Rying, who works for Swedish police and has analyzed all murder cases in Sweden since 1990, said he had no knowledge of any similar cases in recent decades. “I can't think of (any cases in which) a girl under the age of criminal responsibility has killed,” he said.

“We don't know what happened. Murder is a brutal classification for a crime, and the younger a child is, the harder is it to claim intent,” he added.

All the other children living at the home have been moved to other accommodation following the incident, local media reported.

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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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