SHARE
COPY LINK

POLICE

Huge doping ring uncovered in Sweden

Swedish police rounded up 40 people on Tuesday in series of pre-dawn raids across the country in an effort to crack a massive doping scam.

In addition to bringing in dozens for questioning, police confiscated large quantities of steroids, weapons, and ammunition.

The investigation leading to Tuesday’s raids began with the arrest of a 25-year-old man who police believe was trying to flee the country when he was caught by police in Malmö on August 13th.

He had left his home and was carrying a bag full of money, as well as the name and address of a 51-year-old resident of Gävle on Sweden’s east coast.

The 51-year-old and his girlfriend were later remanded to custody on suspicions of serious doping offences.

“We found large quantities of doping drugs and we received signals that his sales basically encompassed the whole of Sweden and took place over the internet,” said Pär Langer of the Gävleborg police department.

Police in several districts, along with the officials from the National Investigation Department (Rikskriminalpolisen), have been working to identify the customers of the suspects already in custody.

According to the Gefle Dagbladet (GD) newspaper, police have been pouring over data retrieved from the 51-year-old’s computer and succeeded in locating a customer registry which may have served as the basis for Tuesday’s raids and subsequent interrogations.

“There’s much to suggest that this is the biggest doping scandal to have ever taken place in Sweden,” said Langer.

According to the police, a large number of the doping drug sales took place in the Stockholm area, and involved the purchase or sales of steroids by people connected to fitness and body building circles.

Police in Jönköping in central Sweden, as well as in Blekinge in the south, and Halland in the west, also participated in Tuesday’s action.

Police in Uppland in eastern Sweden also have also taken people in for questioning. Three men and a woman were questioned during the day. Two have been released but are still considered suspects in the case, according to Sveriges Radio.

POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

SHOW COMMENTS