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POLICE

Guard’s fatal shooting not a threat to PM: police

The guard who shot himself dead at Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s official residence last week was not acting against the government, according to police.

Guard's fatal shooting not a threat to PM: police

The 49-year-old security guard killed himself last Friday afternoon at the Sagerska Palace in central Stockholm, the Prime Minister’s official residence, prompting a massive police response.

No one else was injured in the incident, and Reinfeldt was not at home at the time.

Olle Pålsson, who is leading the investigation into the guard’s death, explained that police have concluded that the death was not in any way aimed at the prime minister or the government:

“There’s nothing in my investigation that indicates this in any case,” he told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

It is believed the guard used his own weapon in the shooting and forensic tests are underway to confirm this. Medical examiners have said the injuries sustained by the guard suggest the incident was a suicide, but an accidental discharge hasn’t been ruled out.

The prime minister’s youngest son was at the residence when the incident occurred, and had said hello to the guard in passing shortly before the fatal shot was fired.

The 49-year-old, who had worked at as a guard for Svensk Bevakningstjänst for six years, showed no signs that he was unwell. Sources of Aftonbladet suggest that the motivation of the likely suicide was financial trouble at home.

“None of the colleagues had noticed that something was afoot,” Pålsson told the paper.

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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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