Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Swedish police confirm pair found dead in Malmö were British citizens

Swedish authorities have now officially named the two men who were found in a burned-out car in Malmö a month ago.

Published: 15 August 2024 13:20 CEST
Swedish police confirm pair found dead in Malmö were British citizens
Police at the scene where the men were found dead on July 14th. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

Swedish police confirmed the bodies were, as suspected, those of British men Juan Cifuentes and Farooq Abdulrazak, 33 and 37, who ran the Empire Holidays Travel Agency in London and were reported missing.

Swedish and British police are investigating their deaths as murder.

They were last seen on camera driving over the Öresund Bridge in a Toyota RAV4 car they had hired in Denmark.

The car was found in the industrial area of Fosie in Malmö with two bodies inside on July 14th.

The prosecutor was on Wednesday reluctant to share any information about what happened to the men in between.

“What I can say is that their movements and what happened is becoming clearer. We’re carrying out an extensive investigation and a lot remains to be done,” prosecutor Magnus Pettersson told Swedish newswire TT.

“We’re still working on the assumption that we’re going to solve the case, and bring clarity to what happened and who did it.”

He declined to say anything about the cause of death, although it has previously been reported they are believed to have been shot dead before the car was set on fire.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS