When the 37-year-old woman was arrested in September a police officer grabbed her hard enough to leave finger-print bruises along her left arm, the woman wrote in her complaint to the Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman (Justitieombudsmannen, JO).
She also claimed they ignored her plea to ease the pressure of the hand cuffs.
When she reached the detention facility on Aminogatan in Mölndal, near Gothenburg in western Sweden, the woman wrote that she was forced to strip in front of several police officers.
“I felt incredibly violated when I had to stand there naked being stared at,” the woman said.
At one point, a police officer inspected one of the then-suspect’s tattoos and said “You’re really into death, aren’t you?” the woman claimed.
She was then handed a thin blanket, which became her only cover once she was taken to the cell.
The woman has likened conditions in the detention centre to a “19th century asylum”. She had to call the guard to flush the toilet in the cell.
“You could hear the guards yelling horribly at the other inmates. I could hear a young person crying throughout the night. It was a pure nightmare.”
She said an officer came to her rescue after a few days after discovering that the suspect had no clothes on.
She was then given clothing, moved to a better cell and given a book and a newspaper to read but as the police officers had confiscated her glasses when she was taken in she was unable to read the paper.
She wrote in her complaint that once she was transferred to the detention facility where she was to await trial “conditions improved tremendously”. She praised the staff there as being “considerate”.
The woman also explained that one police officer confirmed the “bad reputation” of the Aminogatan detention facility, calling it “one of the worst in Europe”.
The woman signed off on her official complaint with a furious-sounding bullet point list.
– You shouldn’t have to be stripped in front of drooling police officers!
– You shouldn’t have to freeze for several days!
– You shouldn’t have to breathe in air stinking of faeces!
– You should have access to your glasses when you are taken away for questioning because you’re not yourself when you can’t wear your glasses!
The woman was arrested in September after police arrived at her apartment in response to a call about gunfire and discovered several human skeletons and knives.
The woman was convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead in mid-December.
The Gothenburg District Court also convicted the woman of weapon crimes, sentencing her to probation and ordering that she undergo treatment for addiction and psychiatric problems.
The Local/at
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