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Man charged with brutal gay hate attacks

Police say a man arrested in Stockholm for allegedly trying to murder a gay man he met on a contact site is now also suspected of murdering another man.

The man, 35, has been charged with killing a 45-year-old man in Solna, a suburb of Stockholm, police say. The victim’s body was found on Monday, but Mikael Ekman of Stockholm Police said he was killed on 28th December.

Ekman also revealed that the man had previous convictions for attacks on gay people.

“The man picks out homosexual victims, but I do not know whether the 45-year-old was homosexual,” Ekman said.

The victim was found bound and stabbed to death in his apartment after colleagues reported that he had not turned up to work. The suspected killer was arrested on Monday on suspiction of robbing and attempting to kill at gay man in an apartment in the Södermalm district of Stockholm.

“We suspect that this is a hate crime. When you meet on the internet, arrange a meeting at someone’s home and when one party after a pleasant interlude tries to kill the other, then it is regarded as a hate crime,” Ekman said.

The suspect has confessed to being at the apartment in Södermalm and admitted holding the knife.

The 35-year-old was previously jailed for one-and-a-half years for an attack in 2006 on an elderly gay man whom he arranged to meet after chatting to him on the internet.

During the attack, which took place in Årsta, another Stockholm suburb, the man thumped his victim and attacked him with a knife and a lit cigarette. The attacker threatened to run the knife through his victim’s spine. He was traced through records of his internet chats. During the trial he said he could not explain why he carried out the attack.

Police say they have discovered details of a large number of other chat contacts in his computer.