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Brother charged in Skåne teen girl stabbing

A 17-year-old boy in southern Sweden was charged on Wednesday with the murder of his 19-year-old sister, who died in April after being stabbed more than 100 times with two knives and a pair of scissors.

Published: 14 November 2012 15:33 CET

Prosecutor Magnus Larsson told the gathered press at a meeting on Wednesday that the boy denies the allegations against him and claims that the girl sustained the injuries from a masked perpetrator. Police have so far not been able to come up with a motive for the brutal attack.

“In the press there have been speculations into some sort of honour motive,” said Larsson adding that police had found no evidence supporting that theory.

However, forensic evidence such as finger prints points to the brother being the killer. The young woman had been in touch with the social services in Landskrona, in Skåne county,for some time due to threats and violence from her family.

The 17-year-old brother continues to deny the allegations despite the evidence presented by the prosecutor and the fact that he had his sister’s blood on his clothes when he was arrested close to the scene of the crime. He claims he had been trying to protect her from her unknown attacker.

“There was another man present at the scene of the crime, I can say that much now,” said the 17-year-old’s defence lawyer Urban Jansson to news agency TT.

The girl had sought help from the Swedish authorities as early as 2009. The Swedish foreign ministry had been in contact with the social services after the girl had left a forced marriage abroad and was returning to her mother in Sweden.

However, according to the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen), the social services didn’t follow up on the young woman’s situation after she returned to Sweden. Neither did the agency look into the matter when the brother, now facing murder charges, arrived in Landskrona the following year.

However, the woman turned down offers of protected identity and an undisclosed address on several occasions. She was in foster care at the time she was murdered.

The boy was arrested on the day the murder was committed. At first their mother was also brought in but was soon released and the police no longer suspect her of being involved in the crime.

TT/The Local/rm

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LANDSKRONA

Court slashes sentence in ‘honour killing’ case

A Swedish appeals court has reduced a lower court's eight-year prison sentence for a 17-year-old boy found of guilty fatally stabbing his sister more than 100 times after she fled a forced marriage in Iraq, in what the court referred to as an "honour killing".

Published: 7 May 2013 11:35 CEST
Court slashes sentence in 'honour killing' case

In a ruling issued on Tuesday, the Malmö Court of Appeals (Hövrätten), upheld the teen’s guilty verdict, but discarded the lower court’s eight-year prison sentence.

The court instead sentenced the boy to four years in juvenile detention because he was 16 when he killed his sister.

As the boy was only days away from his 17th birthday at the time of the attack, the lower court had decided to punish him as a 17-year-old rather than as a 16-year-old, allowing for a longer prison sentence.

The appeals court verdict stated that had the the crime been committed by an adult, it would have warranted a sentence of life in prison.

The appeals court’s verdict also confirmed that there was enough evidence to tie the teen to the murder, restating that the apparent motive was the notion of protecting the family’s honour.

The 17-year-old’s sister had previously fled a forced marriage in Iraq and returned to Sweden. Her body was found with multiple stab wounds in her Landskrona apartment in April 2012.

Representatives of the Malmö-based organization Tänk om, which works to stop honour crimes, told local media at the time that the woman had been in touch with them for one year since returning to Sweden and that she slept with a knife under her pillow for fear of reprisals over her escape.

They claimed local authorities had ignored their warnings that the woman was under threat and needed protection.

After being found guilty in district court, the victim’s brother appealed his sentence and argued he should be set free.

Upon learning of the verdict, attorney Elisabeth Massi Fritz, who represented the victim’s sister, claimed the question of sentencing for violent crimes committed by young people should be tried in the Supreme Court (Högsta domstolen).

“You have to look at what sort of murder we’re dealing with. There are a number of complicating circumstances,” she told the TT news agency.

She added, however, that she was happy that the appeals court had confirmed the “honour” motive for the killing, seeing the verdict as a sign that the Swedish courts are starting to deal with a matter facing many young people in Sweden.

“I’m even more pleased considering all of those who have actually been victims of honour crimes,” she said.

TT/The Local/at

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