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CRIME

DNA new ‘protection’ against copper thieves

A new method for reducing thefts of copper from Swedish railways is being tested, as twenty kilometres of rails in southern Sweden have been marked with smart DNA, making it possible to trace both the stolen copper and the thief.

Published: 3 June 2012 10:18 CEST
DNA new 'protection' against copper thieves

This new way of reducing the increasingly common copper thefts is currently being tried out by the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) and has seen previous success, reported newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN).

“We’re going to try this method which has been very successful in other countries. It has also been tried out in stores in Stockholm with good results,” Sten Vickberg, head of security and maintenance at the Transport Administration told DN.

A substance is smeared onto the rails, marked with traceable ID materials, which make finding the copper possible.

The markings can only be found by light of a UV lamp, which all Swedish police are now being equipped with, reported DN.

The Transport Administration is also considering replacing the copper so hotly desired by robbers with aluminium.

Problems with copper thefts have long plagued the Swedish railway, with costs of up to 120 million kronor ($16.5 million) every year just for material losses. Even more expensive for society are the huge delays caused by the copper thefts.

The railway isn’t alone in being struck by copper thieves. Many Swedish churches have also been stripped of their venerable copper details, or even their entire copper roof.

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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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