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TORTURE

Swede charged for ‘sadistic’ puppy torture

On Thursday a man from Solberga, in southern Stockholm, was charged for torturing his puppy to death.

Published: 29 September 2011 17:21 CEST
Swede charged for 'sadistic' puppy torture
The dog in the picture is not the one featured in the article.

”It was very sadistically done,” said Annika Oljeqvist, of the south Stockholm police, who has been handling the case, to TV4 News.

The puppy was discovered by a pre-school class in March this year. While playing in a wooded area outside the school, the children found a black bin bag, oozing blood.

Police later found a dead fighting dog puppy in the bag and took it to a nearby animal hospital.

When the vet opened the bag it was established that the little puppy had been badly beaten.

The prosecutor is arguing for the strongest possible punishment for the man who has admitted torturing the puppy to death.

”If a human had been killed in a similar way the prosecutor would have demanded 18 years or life in prison,” said Oljeqvist.

”It is very uncommon for the prosecutor to demand the maximum penalty for cruelty to animals, as far as I know it doesn’t happen very often,” said Karin Solberg, press officer at the southern Stockholm policeto TV4 .

The maximum penalty for cruelty to animals in Sweden is two years in prison.

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IMMIGRATION

Torturing migrants gets Somali man life sentence in Italy

A Somali man who tortured dozens of his compatriots and other migrants in a Libyan camp was sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court on Tuesday.

Published: 10 October 2017 16:52 CEST
Torturing migrants gets Somali man life sentence in Italy
The Somali man who tortured dozens of his compatriots and other migrants in a Libyan camp. Photo: Mahmud Turkia/AFP

Osman Matammud, 22, was convicted of murder and multiple counts of torture on the basis of testimony from migrants after he was recognised by chance outside a migrant centre in Milan.

Matammud, who tried to pass himself off as a regular asylum seeker, was arrested in September 2016 after being reported to authorities for using torture to extort money from migrants in a transit camp in Bani Walid, a town in the Libyan desert.

Migrants from sub-Saharan Africa often spend time in such camps while waiting for their families to pay more money to people traffickers who have promised to get them to Europe. Torture is used to speed up and sometimes increase the payments.

A total of 17 victims testified against Matammud in the Milan court, with some saying he had beaten people to death and let others die from a lack of food, water or medical treatment.

Two young women told the court he had raped them.

“Matammud was a case of someone losing all moral compass, of being overcome by a delirious sense of power as a result of having the lives of others in his hands,” lead prosecutor Marcello Tatangelo told the trial last month.

The young Somali man claimed he was just like any other migrant arriving in Italy and had been himself the victim of violent attacks in Libya.

His lawyer portrayed Matammud as being caught up in a war between rival Somali clans. “I've told the truth, I've not lied, nor have I committed any crime,” Matammud said in his final appeal.

Testimonies by the victims left a mark on the investigators. “In a 40-year career, I have never come across horror on the same level, and you have to imagine that what happened in Bani Walid is taking place in every camp,” another prosecutor, Ilda Boccassini, said in January.