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Witnesses 'too scared' to report Malmö hate crime

The Local Sweden
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Witnesses 'too scared' to report Malmö hate crime

Swedish police say witnesses believed to have filmed an alleged racist assault last month, when a man and his 18-month-old son were badly beaten and nearly thrown off a Malmö bridge, have failed to come forward.

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Officers in Malmö, southern Sweden, have made no arrests and still have no suspects in connection to an attack on a bridge early in September. In the attack, a father and his son were approached by a gang when a man assaulted the child and threatened to kill him.

"He insulted them verbally in relation to their skin colour and their ethnicity. And he threatened to kill the boy," Thomas Bull, the head of the police hate crimes unit, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper at the time.

The victim, a Gambian native, later explained that he had been called a black bastard during the altercation. Police have launched a hate crime investigation.

Now, almost one month on, local police still have no leads in the case and are urging members of the public with information to come forward to allow interrogations to take place.

"I thought that by now we would have a few pictures or clips from the incident," Bull told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper on Tuesday. "We've heard there are people who filmed the incident and we are extremely interesting in knowing more."

When asked why the police have had such a hard time getting material, Bull said he was uncertain.

"There are several aspects. Is it fear? Yes, maybe. It could just as likely be a lack of trust in police," he told the paper.

The victim of the attack, who is now living with his son under police protection, has managed to identify several faces, which will allow the police to continue the investigation.

"How we proceed depends completely on what we get from interrogations. The information from there can open new doors for us. However, at the same time, we want the witnesses to send in films of the incident to us," Bull told DN.

"If we were to get one film it wouldn't just open one door. It would open the floodgates."

TT/The Local/og

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