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SWEDISH HONEYMOONER SLAYING

CRIME

Slain Swedish bride’s husband arrested

A British businessman has been arrested at the request of South African authorities on suspicion of conspiring to have his Swedish bride murdered while on honeymoon, police said Wednesday.

Slain Swedish bride's husband arrested

Shrien Dewani, 30, surrendered himself to authorities in Bristol, southwest England, late Tuesday and was detained by London police in connection with the killing of his wife in South Africa.

He is accused of hatching a plot to murder 28-year-old Anni Dewani, a native of Mariestad in central Sweden, who was killed after the car in which the pair was travelling was reportedly hijacked on the outskirts of Cape Town on November 13th.

“Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service’s Extradition Unit have… arrested Shrien Prakash Dewani, 30, on behalf of the South African authorities,” said a statement from the London force.

It noted the allegation against him: “On 13 November 2010, in Cape Town, South Africa, conspired with others to murder Anni Dewani.”

He was due to appear in a London court later Wednesday.

Shrien Dewani’s alleged involvement in the murder emerged in a South African court on Tuesday, marking a sensational twist in the killing of his young wife whose bullet-riddled body was found in an impoverished township neighbourhood.

He returned to Britain days after the incident in which he was unharmed and has denied involvement, but the court heard allegations he connived with a taxi driver to stage a robbery and have his wife shot dead.

Three men were originally charged with the murder but as part of a plea bargain the High Court in Cape Town heard one of the accused allege that the husband ordered the killing.

“The deceased was murdered at the instance of her husband,” Western Cape director of public prosecutions Rodney de Kock told judge John Hlophe in court, South African national news agency SAPA reported.

The claim that Dewani plotted the murder was made by Zola Tongo, the driver of the taxi in which the couple were travelling in near Cape Town.

Tongo was sentenced to 18 years in jail on Tuesday after pleading guilty to murder and aggravated robbery, as the victim’s father looked on and wept.

National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Eric Ntabazalila told AFP that Tongo had given evidence that he was approached by the Briton and promised 15,000 rand ($2,175) “to remove someone off the scene.”

“After some discussion with him I understood that he wanted someone, a woman, killed,” said Tongo in a sworn statement.

He enlisted two accomplices to conduct the murder, according to Ntabazalila.

Tongo’s plea bargain documents reveal that the hijacking was part of a plan devised together with Dewani to conceal the murder.

“Threatening me and Shrien Dewani with a firearm was a mere pretence of force….” he said.

The two other men accused of Dewani’s killing are due to face trial on February 25th.

Prior to the killing, the honeymooners had dined in a seaside restaurant in a town outside Cape Town and were on their way back to the city when Anni Dewani asked to see township nightlife, according to reports at the time.

But court documents released on Tuesday said this was part of a plan of subterfuge concocted by the victim’s husband and Tongo.

Tongo told the court he carefully went through the hijacking and murder details with Dewani, even taking him to a black market foreign exchange dealer in Cape Town to arrange payment and avoid a bank audit trail.

“The agreement was that after the hijacking of the vehicle, Shrien Dewani and I would be ejected from the vehicle unharmed… the deceased would be kidnapped and robbed, before she was murdered.”

Shrien Dewani’s family have lashed out at the claim of his involvement in the killing.

“These allegations are totally ludicrous and very hurtful to a young man who is grieving the loss of the woman he loved, his chosen life partner,” the family said in a statement.

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CRIME

Tech giants promise ‘action plan’ on stopping Nordic gangs using apps for crime

The tech giants Google, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok have pledged to give details "within months" on how they will prevent gang leaders in Nordic countries using their products to carry out serious crimes, Denmark's justice minister said on Friday.

Tech giants promise 'action plan' on stopping Nordic gangs using apps for crime

After meeting the companies along with other Nordic Justice Ministers in Uppsala, Sweden, Hummelgaard and Swedish counterpart Gunnar Strömmer said he now expected the companies to submit an “action plan” to crack down on the use of their apps to recruit young people to carry our shootings and commit other crimes. 

“I would like it to contain concrete steps on how to use the technology on the platforms to remove and screen content that helps to facilitate organised crime to a greater extent,” Hummelgaard said, while Strömmer said that although he was pleased an important step had been taken it “remains to be seen” how seriously the companies take the issue. 

READ ALSO: Danish gangs’ use of Swedish child hitmen is now a diplomatic issue

Ministers from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland met to discuss gang crime, which in recent months has increasingly been shown to cross national borders, with criminals from Sweden travelling to Denmark to carry out shootings and hand grenade attacks.

According to Hummelgaard, there have been “many examples” of gangs using social media and encrypted messaging services to plan serious crimes and recruit new criminals, with lists of the payments available for carrying out various criminal services  found circulating  on social media. 

“The way I see it, political patience is about to run out, not just in the Nordic countries, but in large parts of the Western world,” Hummelgaard said.

He said the four companies had made “a really good first step” in pledging to establish a “joint Nordic cooperation forum”, where they would exchange experience and share information with each other about the use of their products in the region for crime. But he said he wanted them to be “more concrete than that”. 

READ ALSO: Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs hiring ‘child soldiers’

Hummelgaard said that he tech giants had also asked that the police authorities in the Nordic countries to provide information on what kind of “groupings and names” are using their services and how “they communicate”, so that the content can “be removed immediately”. 

“I sense that they have a clear desire and will to cooperate with us. I think that is positive,” he said. “I would also like to say that until today this has not been the experience of many of our law enforcement authorities around the Nordic countries.” 

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