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Lawyer appeals Arboga murder conviction

The lawyer for Christine Schürrer, the 32-year-old German woman sentenced to life in prison for the killing of two toddlers in Arboga in central Sweden last spring, has appealed his client’s conviction.

Published: 29 October 2008 13:41 CET

Schürrer was found guilty on October 14 of bludgeoning to death a nearly four-year-old boy and his almost two-year-old sister and of trying to kill their mother in the central Swedish town of Arboga last March.

In a document filed with the regional Västmanland district court on Wednesday, Schürrer ‘s lawyer Per-Ingvar Ekblad appealed the verdict, charging it was invalid since one of the jurors had admitted to bias.

He called for the Swedish Appeals Court to “void the district court’s verdict and return the case to the district court for a new trial.”

One of the three jurors in the case, Cecilia Uggla, gave an interview to the Expressen tabloid at the end of the trial, saying she “has never really believed that she (Schürrer) is innocent.”

She was removed from the case, but Ekblad argued that Uggla’s statement indicated that she had been biased against his client from the beginning, which “goes against the presumption that the defendant is innocent until the opposite is proven.”

He also stressed that the case against his client rested on largely circumstantial evidence, and that no DNA traces, finger prints or other technical evidence linked her to the crime scene.

The court had acknowledged as much in its verdict, but found there was “substantial other evidence that points to her,” adding that she had been “in Arboga at the time of the crime and she has in the court’s opinion given false testimony about her visit to Arboga that day.”

The court also ruled a clear motive had been established.

The 23-year-old mother of the two murdered children, Emma Jangestig, is the live-in companion of a man Schürrer once dated.

The court ruled that several desperate actions by Schürrer leading up to the crime, including attempting to commit suicide and pretending to be pregnant with her ex-boyfriend’s baby, proved she had not got over him and had a motive to attack his current companion and her family.

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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