Socialist Ashkan Ekman Ekhtiari will keep his seat on the city council in the Swedish city of Kiruna despite being found guilty of murdering his wife and being sentenced to life in prison.
Ekhtiari shot his wife dead in January of 2020 with a hunting rifle as she slept in her bed and was found guilty of murder later that year. He was ejected from the Swedish Socialist party, under whose banner he was elected, but has remained on the city council despite efforts by other members to kick him off.
“We’ve raised that with the city council secretary and they’ve adjusted it at the last council meeting. It has been mismanaged simply because he is not a member of our party,” local Socialist group leader Mats Taaveniku said, Aftonbladet reports.
“We have tried to get him excluded, but that is not possible,” Taaveniku said and the local municipality does not want to pay Ekhtiari the compensation counsellors get either.
“It’s tough, unfortunately, there’s no getting around it even though it’s such a serious crime that he’s been convicted of and that we condemn completely,” Taaveniku added.
Ekhtiari has been serving his life sentence, which is to be followed up by deportation from Sweden, since the Autumn of 2020 but he has denied his guilt and claimed that the entire incident was an accident. His term on the city council is set to end with elections in September.
Ekhtiari is not the first Swedish politician to be convicted of crimes in recent years. Abdi Elmi, a former politician of the Social Democrats was arrested in Greece last year after being caught with passports that were not his own and may have been used to facilitate illegal immigration.
In 2020, Social Democrat Rashad Alasaad was also arrested after being suspected of facilitating illegal immigration. The 27-year-old, a Syrian migrant, was accused of charging thousands of euros to help migrants enter Sweden and obtain passport documents.