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CRIME

KEY POINTS: What do we know about the Almedalen knife attack?

One of Sweden's most senior psychiatrists was knifed to death on Wednesday in the square at the centre of the Almedalen political festival. This is what we know so far.

Published: 7 July 2022 12:27 CEST
Updated: 8 July 2022 21:41 CEST
KEY POINTS: What do we know about the Almedalen knife attack?
Fredrik Persson, Gotland's police chief, and Gotland's top civil servant Peter Lindvall, hold a press conference on Wednesday evening. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

What happened? 

A 32-year-old man stabbed 64-year-old psychiatrist Ing-Marie Wieselgren by a terrace restaurant in Donners Plats, the main square in the medieval town of Visby in Gotland, just a minutes’ walk from the stage where Sweden’s party leaders, including the Prime Minister, have been holding speeches. 

Swedish media have not interviewed eyewitnesses who saw the actual stabbing, but they report hearing a scream, and seeing the man sprint away up an alley. 

He was then thrust against a wall and brought to the ground by Lars Reuterberg, a 69-year-old pensioner, who thought he had stolen a bag. Police came and arrested the attacker minutes after the attack. 

Wieselgren was given CPR and rushed to the Visby hospital, but died a few hours after the attack.

Who was the victim? 

Ing-Marie Wieselgren was the national coordinator for psychiatry at the The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR), and a public figure in Sweden, appearing quite frequently on Swedish state broadcaster SR and in other media to talk about psychiatric and mental health issues, and active on social media, posting video clips on line about mental health. 

Ing-Marie Wieselgren, photographed in Stockholm. Photo: Simon Rehnström / SvD / TT

Who was the perpetrator? 

The 32-year-old attacker, Theodor Engström, has a background in the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), but this does not seem to have been the motive for the attack. 

“The man has given an explanation of his actions, and the connection with NMR is not a focus in the investigation, even though it merits investigation by other agencies,” Petra Götell, the prosecutor in the case, told a news conference. “We believe that the woman who was killed was the intended target of the attack, and that it was motivated by her public profile and her engagement in psychiatric issues.”

“There are reports of him suffering from mental health issues and that he committed the act under the influence of narcotics,” Götell said. The suspect’s explanation, he said, suggested the attack was directed at “psychiatric care”, she said.

According to the Expo magazine, which monitors extremists in Sweden, the man joined NMR as a support member in 2015, and attended at least four neo-Nazi demos in 2017 and 2018, after which his involvement seems to have stopped. 

Engström has confessed to killing Wieselgren, but his lawyer, Staffan Fredriksson, on Thursday would not say whether he was pleading guilty to murder.  

The lawyer also said that his client and the victim had no personal interactions prior to the attack, but that his client had suffered from serious psychiatric problems for several years and that the attack was directed against Swedish psychiatry and society as a whole. 

“He has not received the care he believed he needed, which led to what happened on July 6th,” he said. 

Was the attack pre-planned? 

On Friday, Fredriksson told AFP there was “no doubt that this woman, Ing-Marie, was his primary target”. 

However, he added that his client had said he “could have found somebody else,”, perhaps “completely at random”, as a “Plan B” had he not found his intended victim, and also had people in mind who he refers to as “higher-up targets”. 

 “He was looking to cause a stir. It was his goal to manifest his discontent with psychiatry in Sweden,” the lawyer said.

Fredriksson told Dagens Nyheter that the man had moved around Visby for several days to plan his attack, had checked Wieselgren’s schedule using his mobile phone, and had then gone to wait at the square for her to come. 

What has happened in the court process so far? 

The man has been anhållan, or detained, on suspicion of murder, he has been interviewed twice by police, and a judge has already ordered that he can be detained in pre-trial custody, or häktad, until August 8th. He is detained under full restrictions, meaning he cannot have visitors, meet other prisoners, or be given access to news media.

What is the Almedalen festival and how was it affected? 

The Almedalen political festival, founded in 1968 by the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, is the highlight of Sweden’s political year, with the leaders of all the country’s parties making big speeches in a park between Visby’s medieval city walls and the sea. 

The attack came only a few minutes before Annie Lööf, leader of the Centre Party, was due to hold a press conference. She was prevented from going on stage by her bodyguard. 

However, she went ahead and held her speech on Wednesday evening, holding a minute’s silence for the victim of the attack. 

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POLICE

Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

A new report in Dagens Nyheter has revealed over 514 suspected leaks of sensitive information from at least 30 members of the police force to criminals since 2018. Here's what we know so far.

Published: 30 April 2024 12:28 CEST
Updated: 30 April 2024 15:45 CEST
Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

What’s happened?

According to an investigative report by newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), multiple gang members have infiltrated the police force by, for example, dating police employees, or using family connections to gain access to sensitive information about ongoing cases.

The first article in DN’s series focuses on a woman the newspaper calls Elin, who met a man, Jonas (not his real name), on a dating app when she had one year left of her police education. She falls in love, but his only goal with the relationship is to get a source within the police force which he can use for access to secret information.

Over the course of four years until she was caught, she made multiple illegal searches in the police register for Jonas, his associates and enemies, as well as providing him with information on ongoing investigations against him.

Other cases investigated by the newspaper include a border guard who sold classified information to gangs, a police officer who leaked information to what DN describes as “one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals” and an investigator who was dating a man she was investigating, who she shared screenshots of sensitive information with.

In another case, the police received a tip-off that information was being leaked to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. It was discovered that a group of five alarm operators had made an unusually high number of searches for members of the Hells Angels, who were later discovered to have connections with the gang that they had lied about during their background checks.

What have the consequences of these leaks been?

In some cases, the leaks preceded revenge attacks on enemies of the gang member involved in the relationship. In other cases, the gang members’ enemies disappeared or were murdered.

Some of the people from the police force involved in the leaks were sentenced to fines for illegal data access or breaches of professional secrecy, while the evidence against others was not sufficient to prosecute. 

At least 30 employees had for different reasons been considered “security risks” and either resigned or were forced to quit, the newspaper reported, with over 514 suspected leaks taking place from police to criminals since 2018.

How do criminals find police officers?

According to DN, they look for things that can be used as blackmail, like police officers who buy drugs, or set “honey traps”, like the one used against Elin, where they meet police officers or students on dating apps and start a relationship.

“You take Tinder, for example, and set your search radius so the police school is in the centre. When you get a match, it’s easy to check if it’s a student, through class lists or how they present themselves on social media. They’re proud of their line of work,” Jonas told DN.

They might also use their family connections to put pressure on relatives who work in the police force.

Why is this important?

It’s important because Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related violence in recent years, with a surge in shootings and bombings as gangs fight for control over different drug markets.

Swedes also have a high level of trust in the police force – 72 percent according to a 2024 study by Medieakademin, topping the list of state authorities, with a higher level of trust than universities, healthcare, the courts and even the Swedish church. This was five percent higher than in 2023.

Although the vast majority of police officers do not leak information to criminal networks, Sweden does not have a history of organised crime infiltrating the police force, so officials are keeping a close eye on these leaks to make sure they don’t become more common.

On April 29th, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told TT newswire that the leaks were “very serious”, potentially putting trust in the police force at risk.

“There are many great risks and one is that trust in police declines, that people get the idea that mafia-like methods are used to infiltrate law enforcement,” he said, before adding that he was unable to say whether it constituted a threat to national security or not purely based on the initial DN article.

“But the mere suspicion of these types of connections are damaging,” he told the newswire.

What happens now?

Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told DN that he planned to call a meeting with police leadership about the reports, which he described as “extremely serious”.

“[At that meeting] we will consider the need for further measures,” he said.

“Leaking sensitive information to criminals is against the law and can have very damaging consequences for the work of the police force,” Strömmer told DN, adding that it could undermine trust in the police and “damage democracy”.

Last summer, the government increased the penalty for breaching professional secrecy, and a special investigator was tasked with looking at a potential reform of the rules on corruption and professional misconduct in February – the Crime Prevention Council is also involved in that investigation, where it has been asked to provide information on how gangs use government employees.

“Protecting the integrity of the justice system against infiltration and other security threats is a central part of the new national strategy against organised crime that the government decided on earlier this year, and it is given the highest priority in our assignments to the authorities,” Strömmer told the newspaper.

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