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CRIME

Welfare board to investigate baby’s death

The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) is to open its own investigation into the death of a newborn baby at Astrid Lindgren's Children's Hospital in Solna.

Published: 7 March 2009 09:13 CET

Meanwhile senior physicians have condemned the arrest of a paediatrician at the hospital on suspicion of manslaughter and warn of the potential damage to child healthcare in Sweden.

The doctor is suspected of euthanasia by injecting the then three-month-old baby with deadly doses of morphine and a tranquillizer before turning off the respirator keeping the brain-damaged baby alive.

“I don’t want to speculate on the motive. But it’s possible that this is a case of a mercy killing,” prosecutor Elisabeth Brandt told Sveriges Radio on Friday.

Although euthanasia is illegal in Sweden it is unusual that legal procedures against doctors occur, cases of malpractice usually go before the National Board of Health and Welfare.

The board has now announced that it will look into the case and has requested all documents associated with the case from the department at the hospital where the doctor works.

The board’s director-general Lars-Erik Holm and the chairperson of the doctor’s union, Läkareförbundet, Eva Nilsson Bågenholm, have expressed surprise that the case has been passed on to the justice system.

“I am surprise that this has gone over the heads of the health and welfare board,” Holm said to news agency TT on Friday.

Bågenholm argued that only the health and welfare board had the scope to decide such cases.

Suspicions against the doctor are primarily based on an autopsy conducted after the baby’s death in September 2008.

There is nothing strange about administering an excessively high dose of morphine when a respirator is to be turned off, Lars-Erik Holm argued.

Stefan Enqvist, a senior physician at Karolinska University Hospital, agrees. Engvist points out that the baby’s life could not be saved and a decision had been taken, in concert with the baby’s parents, to terminate life support.

“In this instance medicine is administered to make death as comfortable as possible. That was what has occurred here,” Enqvist told TT.

Sometimes the doses are very high, according to Enqvist, who has studied the medical journals without finding anything of note.

The case has been met with controversy in Sweden.

In a full page opinion article in Dagens Nyheter on Saturday, leading paediatrician at Astrid Lingren’s Children Hospital, Hugo Lagercrantz, has accused the prosecutor, Elisabeth Brandt, of “seriously damaging” child healthcare in Sweden.

Lagercrantz argues that the case will force doctors to continue to treat patients with no hope of recovery and underlines the lack of clear guidelines in the area.

“We are therefore faced with a a future of congested hospital departments and an increasing number of relatives who drag doctors before the courts and prosecutors who serve remand notices,” Lagercrantz writes.

The doctor will now be held in a detention centre while prosecutors continue to interview witnesses as a part of the investigation.

If prosecutors decide to bring formal charges, they are to be filed by 11am on March 13th, at which time the doctor’s detention will be reviewed.

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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