SHARE
COPY LINK

POLICE

‘Skeleton lover’ report sparks inquiry

Seven police detention centre staff are suspected of criminal conduct after several detainees, including a woman recently convicted for keeping bones in her flat, complained of mistreatment.

'Skeleton lover' report sparks inquiry

The 37-year-old woman who was convicted of “violating the peace of the dead” after keeping hundreds of human bones in her Gothenburg apartment reported the police who arrested her to the Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman (Justitieombudsmännen) earlier this week.

She cited rough treatment and denigrating comments in her complaint.

According to newspaper Göteborgs-Posten (GP), several other individuals have also experienced inhumane and degrading treatment at the detention facility in Mölndal, near Gothenburg in western Sweden.

At least one other woman has filed a complaint with the Ombudsman.

Now, seven people working at the detention facility are suspected of criminal conduct. Two of them are police officers and five are civilian staff members.

A preliminary investigation is underway and the seven suspects have been transferred to new posts.

“We cannot rule out that crimes have been committed,” said Bertil Claesson, head of the local criminal investigation department.

The 37-year-old “skeleton lover” claimed that she was forced to strip in front of several police officers and was then handed a thin blanket, which became her only cover once she was taken to the cell.

“I felt incredibly violated when I had to stand there naked being stared at,” the woman wrote in her complaint to the Ombudsman.

The other woman who filed a complaint with the Ombudsman told GP that she was forced to strip naked and then remain without clothes for 72 hours.

Making detainees strip down and remain naked is “highly unusual”, said Claesson.

“There are judgment calls that differ from case to case depending on how suicidal the person is,” he said.

TT/The Local/nr Follow The Local on Twitter

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS