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Remand for missing woman murder suspect

A 22-year-old has been remanded in custody in northern Sweden on suspicion of killing a 20-year-old woman who vanished three weeks ago and whose remains were discovered last week.

Published: 27 May 2013 14:23 CEST

Remand for missing woman murder suspect

The suspect denies committing any crime, but was nevertheless ordered held on remand by Luleå District Court on Monday on suspicions of having murdered 20-year-old Vatchareeya Bangsuan, who was last seen on May 4th in Boden, northern Sweden.

Bangsuan’s remains were found last week in an abandoned military base by volunteer search organization Missing People.

The 22-year-old’s attorney said he wasn’t surprised by the court’s ruling.

“It wasn’t exactly unexpected,” attorney Bo Forssberg told the TT news agency following the decision.

However, Forssberg refused to divulge any details about what sort of evidence was presented by prosecutors, citing a gag order on the proceedings.

Prosecutors requested Monday’s hearing, which attracted a great deal of attention in the Swedish media, be held behind closed doors, a request the court duly granted.

The 22-year-old has said that Bangsuan was at his home the day before she was last seen alive and police have conducted a forensic investigation of his apartment and his parents’ house.

Investigators are now awaiting the results of tests carried out by Sweden’s National Forensics Laboratory (Statens kriminaltekniska laboratorium, SKL), but prosecutor Ulrika Schönbeck was unable to say exactly when the results would be completed.

Bangsuan was reported missing on Tuesday, May 7th. The previous Saturday she wrote on Facebook that she planned to exercise and then go to a friend’s to study. The friend’s house to which she went was that of the 22-year-old suspect.

An initial search by police was halted on Friday, May 10th.

On May 20th, members of a search party organized by Missing People found parts of Bangsuan’s body in an abandoned house in Boden.

Two days later, more remains were found in a nearby wooded area.

TT/The Local/dl

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Top-ranking Syrian military official to face trial in Sweden

Sixty-five-year-old former Syrian brigadier general Mohammed Hamo, who lives in Sweden, stands accused of “aiding and abetting” war crimes during Syria’s civil war, which can carry a sentence of life in jail.

The war in Syria between Bashar al-Assad’s regime and armed opposition groups, including the Islamic State, erupted after the government repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011.

It has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s economy and infrastructure.

According to the charge sheet, Hamo contributed – through “advice and action” – to the Syrian army’s warfare, “which systematically involved indiscriminate attacks on several towns or places in the area in and around the towns of Hama and Homs”.

The charges concern the period of January 1st to July 20th, 2012 and the trial is expected to last until late May.

Prosecutors say that the Syrian army’s “warfare has included widespread air and ground attacks by unknown perpetrators within the Syrian army”.

The prosecution argues that strikes were carried out without distinction – as required by international law – between civilian and military targets.

In his role as a brigadier general and head of an armament division, he allegedly helped with the coordination and supply of arms to units, enabling the carrying out of orders on an “operational level”.

Hamo’s lawyer, Mari Kilman, told AFP that her client denied committing a crime but said she did not wish to comment further ahead of the trial.

Several plaintiffs are due to testify at the trial, including Syrians from the cities in question and a British photographer who was injured during one of the strikes.

‘Complete impunity’

“The attacks in and around Homs and Hama in 2012 resulted in widespread civilian harm and an immense destruction of civilian properties,” Aida Samani, senior legal advisor at rights group Civil Rights Defenders, told AFP.

“The same conduct has been repeated systematically by the Syrian army in other cities across Syria with complete impunity,” she continued.

This trial will be the first in Europe “to address these types of indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian army”, according to Samani, who added that it “will be the first opportunity for victims of the attacks to have their voices heard in an independent court”.

Hamo is the highest-ranking military official to actually go on trial in Europe, but other European countries have also tried to bring charges against even more senior members.

In March, Swiss prosecutors charged Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of president Bashar al-Assad, with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

However, it remains unlikely Rifaat al-Assad – who recently returned to Syria after 37 years in exile – will show up in person for the trial, for which a date has yet to be set.

Swiss law allows for trials in absentia under certain conditions.

Last November, France issued an international arrest warrant for Bashar al-Assad himself, who stands accused of complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes over chemical attacks in 2013.

Three other international warrants were also issued for the arrests of Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher, the de-facto chief of the Fourth Division – an elite military unit of the Syrian army – and two generals.

In January of 2022, a German court sentenced former Syrian colonel Anwar Raslan to life in jail for crimes against humanity in the first global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria, which was hailed by victims as a victory for justice.

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