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KARLSKRONA

CRIME

Child murder suspects give clashing evidence

IN PICTURES: The Karlskrona couple held on suspicion of killing an 8-year-old girl in their care have told the police contradictory versions of what happened the night the young girl died.

Published: 6 May 2014 09:23 CEST
Child murder suspects give clashing evidence
¨The 31-year-old man arrives at his remand hearing. Photo: TT

The regional Sydöstran newspaper reported that the man, 31, and the woman, 30, had offered different accounts about what happened in their apartment on Walpurgis night. The man was a relative of the 8-year-old girl, who was found lifeless in the apartment. She was pronounced dead in hospital later.

The cause of death had still not been determined, but may be revealed on Tuesday, as the young girl's body has been sent to autopsy. 

IN PICTURES: Karlskrona mourns as the police and the municipality investigate the 8-year-old's death

The police said it was still unclear who had called emergency services on the night of the girl's death. 

Her death has stunned the town in southern Sweden with floral tributes left outside her school and her home. It has since emerged that social services were alerted to the girl's precarious living situation over a year ago.

Shortly before her death, a neighbour alerted the police to her suspicions that the girl was being abused. On Good Friday, she met the 8-year-old in the elevator of their apartment building and noticed that she was bruised and had problems walking. The police sent the complaint on to social services four days later, as the report coincided with the long Easter holiday weekend.

The girl came to Sweden by herself last year. The 31-year-old man and the 30-year-old woman were her legal guardians. The girl's parents found out about her death via Facebook, before the authorities in Sweden managed to liaise with police in Gaza to try to have an officer tell the family of the death in person.

CRIME

Helsingborg ‘has become major European cocaine hub’

A port in southern Sweden has become a European hub for cocaine being smuggled from South America to the continent, Swedish customs warned Friday following several large drug seizures this year.

Published: 26 May 2023 13:48 CEST
Helsingborg 'has become major European cocaine hub'

Swedish customs agents have seized 867 kilograms (1,911 pounds) of cocaine at the Helsingborg port since the beginning of this year, the customs agency said, compared with the 822 kilograms seized in the whole of Sweden last year.

Including seizures abroad destined for Helsingborg, a total of 1.3 tonnes of cocaine had been seized since September 2022.

Magnus Pettersson, a senior prosecutor with the Prosecution Authority’s unit for international and organised crime, told a press conference the seizures “were completely without precedent in Swedish criminal history.”

“Sweden, and the port of Helsingborg, has become the point of transit for South American cocaine on its way out onto the illegal European market,” Pettersson said.

The narcotics are being smuggled in containers often transporting fruits and vegetables on freight ships from South America, in many cases Ecuador, he said.

Hidden compartments are often built into the containers. Helsingborg had emerged as a hub for drug trafficking because the frequency of harbour controls had been too low and security around the port had been lacking.

Coupled together, this meant there was a “near free flow of cocaine” both into and out of the port.

In order to stop the smuggling, every refrigerated container from South America passing through the port would need to be controlled, the customs agency said. The smuggling was believed to involve both Swedish and international criminal networks.

In recent months, Swedish Customs had on multiple occasions discovered tracks from smugglers breaking into the port area to empty the containers.

Equipment such as “bags, bolt cutters and blow torches” had been found, the agency said in a statement.

While additional resources had been committed, the customs agency lamented that few arrests had been made, noting that the only arrest had been of two Albanian citizens after they had collected 47 kilograms of cocaine in December.

Sweden has struggled to rein in a surge of shootings and bombings in recent years, as gangs settle scores fuelled by the narcotics trade.

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