A 58-year-old man was remanded in custody on Friday on suspicion that he held a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis captive in a tiny cabin in southern Sweden for nine years, media reported.
A court in the southern town of Eksjoe ruled that the man should be detained on suspicion that he imprisoned his girlfriend from 1999 until last month and had abused her since 2000, the TT news agency reported.
Police said earlier on Friday that the man had been arrested on Wednesday for having locked the woman, “between 55 and 60 years old,” in a 15m² cabin in the southern Esjoe region “from 1999 until the end of August this year.”
The victim was taken to hospital “in serious condition, but is doing better, in light of the circumstances,” local police spokesman Johan Frisk said.
Unconfirmed reports said that the woman was suffering from multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects the nervous system and reduces physical mobility.
Reports said she weighed only between 35kg 40kg when she was found.
Neither she nor her captor were identified, although Frisk said they were both Swedes.
Reports, however, said the name the man had given to police belonged to a person who died eight years ago.
“It is never good when you don’t know who you’re dealing with. We are working hard to determine the man’s identity so we can investigate his background,” Frisk told Swedish public radio late on Friday.
The man’s defense lawyer, Uno Karlsson, told TT that the question of his client’s identity would soon be resolved, pointing out that a person can be declared deceased if they disappear for a long period of time or at the request of a family member.
Karlsson also said that his client, who denied any wrongdoing, was disappointed that he had been remanded in custody, but would submit to a requested psychological evaluation.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS