An Afghan migrant and his two sons have been arrested following an incident on a public transit bus that saw a 21-year-old man stabbed to death.
The alleged murder took place on Wednesday earlier this week in the Swedish town of Kiruna, located in the far north of the Scandinavian country. The man and his sons, who are said to be minors, were arrested a short time later and have claimed they acted in self-defence.
According to a report from Swedish news website Nyheter Idag, the three came to Sweden in 2012 and initially applied for asylum but were rejected. They again applied in 2015 and were given permanent residency permits, with the man’s sons becoming Swedish citizens last year.
Lindha Strömberg, the prosecutor in the case, told Swedish broadcaster SVT that the victim and the alleged murderers knew each other before the incident, but did not go into details on a potential motive for the alleged murder.
“All three admit parts of the course of events, but they deny the crime. That means they believe they have done something, but they do not plead guilty to the crime of murder. I cannot say more at present,” she said.
Since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, Sweden has seen a number of cases involving Afghan migrants committing murder.
In January of last year, for example, a 41-year-old Afghan national was charged with the alleged murder of his teenage wife in 2016. The Afghan had fled the country after coming under investigation for the murder and was arrested in Iran in the spring of 2018 before being extradited back to Sweden.
In October of 2019 another Afghan man was arrested after allegedly strangling his 69-year-old Swedish teacher, who was also his lover, to death.
He was later found guilty of the murder but had his sentenced reduced in December by a Swedish court that decided the 20-year-old had serious mental problems.
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