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Convicted murderer escapes in Stockholm

Police have issued a nationwide alert following the escape of a convicted murderer from two guardians during a temporary release in central Stockholm on Wednesday.

Published: 5 December 2008 07:07 CET

The 33-year-old man is serving a 14-year sentence after being convicted on charges of murder and attempted murder, the Expressen newspaper reports.

According to the paper, the convict and his two guardians were preparing for their return trip to prison shortly after running an errand at Hötorget when the 33-year-old ran away from his guardians.

The man, who has been in prison since 1999 and would have been eligible for parole next July, had been out on supervised temporary release eight times previously without incident.

“During those he’s handled himself without any problems, so this was completely unexpected,” said Anders Ekström of the prison in Norrtälje north of Stochkholm where the man is serving his sentence.

A national alert was issued on Wednesday afternoon around 4:00pm, and since then police have not received any more information about the man’s whereabouts.

But according to Stockholm police spokesperson Roger Kämpe, the escaped murdered is not considered dangerous.

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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