A Swedish court has reduced the prison sentence for a 20-year-old Afghan who murdered his 69-year-old teacher, who he was also in a sexual relationship with at the time, because of the migrant’s mental health issues.
The Afghan, who came to Sweden in 2015, reported the murder himself when he called emergency services stating that he had strangled the woman on June 27th, Swedish newspaper Expressen reports.
According to news website Nyheter Idag, the man’s name is Ahmad Nazari and he is said to have been engaged in a sexual relationship with the woman around a year before the murder took place.
While he has denied intentionally trying to kill the 69-year-old, a Swedish court found Nazari guilty of murder stating that he had attacked her without warning when she had let him into her home and showed a measure of trust towards him.
After his conviction for murder, Nazari was sentenced to 11 years in prison to be followed by deportation.
“He thinks he has not intentionally taken the life of a woman, he wants to reduce the prison sentence,” Nazari’s lawyer Anders Olsson said. Following the conviction, he launched an appeal to the Swedish High Court which reduced the sentence to nine and a half years.
The court also mentioned the mental health issues displayed by Nazari while in custody, which included Nazari claiming that he had actually murdered Swedish journalist Joakim Lamotte.
“I’m not sure about anything. I’m not sure about anything about myself, anything. I don’t know if I’m a woman or a man,” he told police.
The murder of the teacher, who was also an activist who worked with migrants, follows other murders of pro-refugee activists including German student Maria Ladenburger in 2016 and German pro-migrant activist Sophia Lösche in 2018.