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POLICE

Johan, 24, suffocated to death by police

A 24-year-old man died in Gothenburg died last April as a direct result of injuries sustained at the hands of police officers. But none of the officers involved have been held accountable as prosecutors failed to follow up on the case, according to the findings of a Sveriges Radio report.

A post mortem examination confirmed that Johan Liljeqvist’s death resulted from suffocation after he was pinned to the ground with such force and for so long that he eventually stopped breathing. He was taken to hospital where he later died from his injuries, reports Sveriges Radio’s news programme Ekot following a review of a preliminary investigation that was abandoned by prosecutors.

The 24-year-old was arrested in Gothenburg in April last year for kicking a car. A witness told Sveriges Radio that Liljeqvist was held down by an estimated four police officers who pressed their knees into the victim’s back to prevent him from moving.

Prosecutor Bo Lindgren conceded that important details had been set aside in the investigation and that not all police officers present at the scene were questioned in connection with the death, as he had previously claimed.

“I can admit that I might have gone awry there,” he told Sveriges Radio.

Swedish police altered their procedures following the death in police arrest of 41-year-old Osmo Vallo in Karlstad in 1995. Since then it has been well known in police circles that there is a serious risk of death by suffocation if a handcuffed suspect is held face down with pressure on the upper body.

“All officers who have completed their police training in the last ten or eleven years are fully aware of this problem,” Björn Jacobson at the Swedish National Police Academy told Sveriges Radio, adding that older officers had also been brought up to the date with the dangers inherent in the technique.

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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.

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