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CRIME

Three men arrested for triple murder

Three men have been arrested for a triple murder in Härnosand, northern Sweden.

Three men arrested for triple murder

Two young teenage siblings, a boy and a girl, and a middle-aged man were found killed in Härnösand in northern Sweden on Tuesday evening.

A third suspect was arrested at luchtime on Wednesday in Umeå. Police had earlier issued a warrant for his arrest. He revealed when he boarded the boat that he was headed for Germany.

The arrest was confirmed by deputy chief prosecutor Bertil Månsson of the Sundsvall Public Prosecution Office, who is the leader of a preliminary investigation, Expressen.se reported.

The man who was arrested is in his 20s. According to Allehanda.se, the man is not known for any past crimes.

Earlier, police arrested a man in his 60s on Tuesday and a second man, also in his 60s, overnight on suspicion of murder. One of the men was taken in for questioning from his home in a small locality near Härnösand.

Previously, police said that the men were arrested on “reasonable suspicion” of committing the murders, a technical term meaning that more evidence would be required to press a case against the suspects.

A press conference about the investigation will be held at Sundsvall police station on Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier, the first two men who were arrested denied having anything to do with the killings.

“He is admitting nothing. That is to say, he denies the allegations,” Hans Björner of Västernorrland police said previously about the first man.

An anonymous tip sent early on Tuesday evening to SOS Alarm said that there were three lifeless bodies in the villa in central Härnösand. Police found two teenagers and a middle-aged man dead on arrival at the scene.

“It was concluded straight away that the people were dead and that they had been subjected to violence. We cannot yet say how they were killed, but all the indications are that they were killed just prior to the alarm call,” Björner said earlier on Wednesday.

Police would not comment on the relationship between the two men and the victims. However, they are not known to police for previous crimes.

Björner said police have not yet been able to establish a motive for the attack.

“We have a number of possible theories that we are working on, but no clear picture on the motive,” Björner told news agency TT.

The first man was arrested in the vicinity of the house where the three bodies were found.

At Härnösand’s Kiörningskolan, students grieved the loss of two of their schoolmates.

Classes were canceled and students gathered in groups to talk about the tragedy.

School staff said nothing about the family had given them cause for concern:

“Nothing. They were children that we were very happy to have and we had good cooperation with the mother,” said Bert Olsson, president of the Solen municipal school management area, to which the murdered children’s school belonged.

The house has been cordoned off and police technicians have begun combing the property for clues. The work was broken off overnight and resumed on Wednesday morning as part of an investigation involving 20 to 30 officers.

Following an arrest, the prosecutor has three days to come to a decision over whether the suspect should be remanded into custody, according to Björner.

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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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