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CRIME

Examiner charged over driving licence bribes

A driving examiner from Gothenburg has been indicted on bribery charges. The woman is alleged to have accepted half a million kronor ($57,000) in exchange for approving driving licences for 70 test candidates.

According to charges presented on Wednesday at Gothenburg district court, the woman’s driving licence bribery trail stretched from from 2004 until she was discovered in February last year.

Four men have also been charged with bribery offences for acting as middlemen between the woman and the driving students.

The woman at the centre of the case has also been indicted on people smuggling charges. She is accused of taking payment of 50,000 kronor to marry an Albanian man in order to facilitate his move to Sweden.

This is the first time the National Anti-Corruption Unit has ever had to deal with a case involving a driving examiner.

“The driving examiner position is unique. Decisions are taken alone and without any checks. Where and how a person has driven is not registered anywhere. There are no cameras and there is no GPS,” prosecutor Nils-Erik Schultz told news agency TT.

Schultz said he would not be pressing charges against any of the students believed to have bribed the examiner.

“We’re not sure who they are,” said Schultz, adding that though the woman had cooperated with investigators she had only been able to identify a handful of students who had paid her bribes.

The woman has admitted to certain bribery offences, though not the more serious charge of aggravated bribery.

Anders Borglund, head of the testing department at the Swedish National Road Administration, said checks surrounding the issuing of driving licences had become more rigorous since the bribery allegations first surfaced.

The administration had undertaken a more supervisory role, he said.

“There have also been more people reporting bribery attempts to the police. This shows that there are driving examiners who are honest.”

CRIME

Top-ranking Syrian military official to face trial in Sweden

The highest-ranking Syrian military official ever to be tried in Europe was set to face court in Sweden on Monday.

Top-ranking Syrian military official to face trial in Sweden

Sixty-five-year-old former Syrian brigadier general Mohammed Hamo, who lives in Sweden, stands accused of “aiding and abetting” war crimes during Syria’s civil war, which can carry a sentence of life in jail.

The war in Syria between Bashar al-Assad’s regime and armed opposition groups, including the Islamic State, erupted after the government repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011.

It has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s economy and infrastructure.

According to the charge sheet, Hamo contributed – through “advice and action” – to the Syrian army’s warfare, “which systematically involved indiscriminate attacks on several towns or places in the area in and around the towns of Hama and Homs”.

The charges concern the period of January 1st to July 20th, 2012 and the trial is expected to last until late May.

Prosecutors say that the Syrian army’s “warfare has included widespread air and ground attacks by unknown perpetrators within the Syrian army”.

The prosecution argues that strikes were carried out without distinction – as required by international law – between civilian and military targets.

In his role as a brigadier general and head of an armament division, he allegedly helped with the coordination and supply of arms to units, enabling the carrying out of orders on an “operational level”.

Hamo’s lawyer, Mari Kilman, told AFP that her client denied committing a crime but said she did not wish to comment further ahead of the trial.

Several plaintiffs are due to testify at the trial, including Syrians from the cities in question and a British photographer who was injured during one of the strikes.

‘Complete impunity’

“The attacks in and around Homs and Hama in 2012 resulted in widespread civilian harm and an immense destruction of civilian properties,” Aida Samani, senior legal advisor at rights group Civil Rights Defenders, told AFP.

“The same conduct has been repeated systematically by the Syrian army in other cities across Syria with complete impunity,” she continued.

This trial will be the first in Europe “to address these types of indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian army”, according to Samani, who added that it “will be the first opportunity for victims of the attacks to have their voices heard in an independent court”.

Hamo is the highest-ranking military official to actually go on trial in Europe, but other European countries have also tried to bring charges against even more senior members.

In March, Swiss prosecutors charged Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of president Bashar al-Assad, with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

However, it remains unlikely Rifaat al-Assad – who recently returned to Syria after 37 years in exile – will show up in person for the trial, for which a date has yet to be set.

Swiss law allows for trials in absentia under certain conditions.

Last November, France issued an international arrest warrant for Bashar al-Assad himself, who stands accused of complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes over chemical attacks in 2013.

Three other international warrants were also issued for the arrests of Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher, the de-facto chief of the Fourth Division – an elite military unit of the Syrian army – and two generals.

In January of 2022, a German court sentenced former Syrian colonel Anwar Raslan to life in jail for crimes against humanity in the first global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria, which was hailed by victims as a victory for justice.

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