The four Eritreans who committed aggravated rape against a 40-year-old Swedish woman in Stockholm in June of last year have been sentenced to jail. However, despite the prosecutor’s request, the court decided they will not be deported.
As Remix News previously reported, on the night of June 26, 2022, a 40-year-old intoxicated woman was attacked by four men, all of whom were unknown to her, in Flemingsberg, south of Stockholm. One of the men kicked the woman to the ground in a forest near the train station. He and the other three foreigners then took turns raping her. Afterward, two of the perpetrators brought the woman to Flemingsberg station where they raped her again in an elevator.
Prosecutor Axel Frick at the Södertörn Prosecutor’s Office said at the time that the crimes are serious due to the fact it was a gang rape and the men “showed particular recklessness or brutality” by filming the abuse.
Prosecutor Axel Frick argued that all four rapists should be deported to Eritrea and banned from returning to Sweden for the next 15 years if convicted. However, the court ruled that all the men can stay in Sweden, and authorities will be barred from deporting them for their crime.
Media avoided naming suspects’ foreign origins
When the case was first reported, a number of Swedish outlets, including TT, the Swedish national news agency, claimed that the four suspects were from the Swedish cities and towns of Sandviken, Huddinge, Motala, and Vallentuna. However, Swedish news outlet NyaTider wrote at the time that these news outlets “chose to omit the fact that all of the suspected men come from Eritrea and need an interpreter,” despite police having released that information.
Gang rapists will have sentences automatically reduced by one-third
Samnytt reported that the Södertörn District Court sentenced three of the men to five years and six months in prison for aggravated rape. The fourth man was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for rape. In all cases, one-third of the sentence has been deducted in accordance with common practice. In addition to the prison sentences, the four men must pay damages to the woman.
The two youngest perpetrators, Huluf Kindeya Gebremariam (27) and Seare Measho Redae (29), came to Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Both were granted residence permits that same year. The other two are 33-year-old Haileab Ghebre Weldemichael, who only has a temporary residence permit, and 35-year-old Mihretab Haile Gebrehiwt, who has a permanent residence permit. Both arrived in Sweden in 2014.
Sweden is known for handing out light sentences for rape even as the country experiences an explosive rise in rape cases. For example, one migrant who raped a 9-year-old girl avoided deportation; another migrant who raped a 12-year-old child in a public toilet only had to attend gender sensitivity courses, avoiding both jail time and deportation.
Sweden’s gang rape crisis
The country has faced numerous gang rape cases in recent years, nearly all of them involving foreigners. At the same time, well-known and respected Swedish researchers were prosecuted after they determined that most rapes in the country are committed by foreigners.
In 2018, Expressen reported on this growing trend in Sweden. After an investigation into court cases involving gang rape over the previous two years, the paper found that 43 men had been convicted of the offense. It also determined that 40 of the 43 men with gang rape convictions were either immigrants born abroad or men born in Sweden to immigrant parents.
Furthermore, in 2018, SVT reported that rape statistics in Sweden showed that 58 percent of men with rape or attempted rape convictions over the preceding five years were immigrants born outside the European Union, mainly from North Africa, South Africa, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.
The BBC also reported that in cases where victims did not know their attackers, the proportion of foreign-born men convicted of sexual assault was 80 percent.
Gang rapes involving migrants are not unique to Sweden either, with half of all gang rapes in Germany committed by foreigners.