A Somali migrant who executed a man in the middle of a Swedish street in what is believed to have been a case of mistaken identity cannot be deported because he has obtained Swedish citizenship, a court has ruled.
Ali Said, 19, was sentenced to life in prison by Lund District Court on Tuesday for the attack that occurred on May 14 last year outside a grocery store in Landskrona, a town in western Sweden.
In what was described by the court as a “pure execution”, a masked Said drove his electric scooter up to a 19-year-old man who was outside the store with his friends and fired several shots at the group.
When his victim was lying on the ground, the attacker fired multiple further shots at the victim, who sustained five gunshot wounds and died at the scene.
It later transpired that the victim was not Said’s intended target and was a case of mistaken identity. “[He] appears to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time,” read the court documents from the trial.
Said arrived in Sweden from Somalia in November 2012, having been brought over through the family reunification system after his mother arrived in June of the same year.
He was granted a permanent residence permit in April 2013 and obtained Swedish citizenship in July 2016.
The district court ruled on Tuesday that Said would be sentenced to life imprisonment for murder as well as assault and illegal threats made during the police investigation.
It further ruled that he could not be deported back to Somalia because he is a Swedish citizen, meaning the Swedish taxpayer will continue to pay for his incarceration.