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full screen The hearing in Örebro District Court begins on Wednesday and is to last for 1.5 months. Archive image. Photo: Pavel Koubek/TT
Two months before she is to give birth to her son, the 20-year-old woman is found murdered in her apartment in Örebro. Now the boyfriend is on trial, suspected of having killed her to “preserve or maintain his honor”.
– His actions have led to two lives being extinguished, says state prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson in the district court.
It is the woman’s mother who finds her on April 29, 2023. The mother has been looking for her for several hours, but when she gets no answers, she goes to her daughter’s apartment and finds the door unlocked.
Inside the apartment, she finds the woman lying on the floor in the bedroom with a lamp cord around her neck. Ambulance personnel who arrive quickly determine that she is deceased.
Already on the same day, the woman’s boyfriend is arrested and detained on suspicion of murder. The man has been in custody since then, despite his denial. He claims he was not there when the woman died.
Evidence target
The man, dressed in a light blue shirt and a dark blue jacket on the spot in Örebro district court, maintains his innocence when the trial begins on Wednesday through his lawyer.
The defense emphasizes that it is a circumstantial case, that there is no evidence that directly ties the man to the murder. However, prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson believes that the investigation clearly shows that it is the now 22-year-old man who killed the woman by suffocating and strangling her, sometime during the night between April 28 and 29.
Among the evidence are investigations of traces from the crime scene and analyzes of how telephones were handled around the time of the crime, which according to her prove that he is the one who killed the woman.
He also had a motive to murder the woman.
Honor context
The man had kept the relationship with the woman a secret from his family, as he was worried about what they would think that he was with the “wrong” woman. On the same day as the murder, he would tell his family about the relationship, and that he would soon become a father.
Instead, he murdered the woman who was carrying his child, in whole or in part to “preserve or restore his and his family’s honor,” says Elisabeth Anderson.
– He has dishonored his family. If he completes, he loses his family. He ultimately chooses family, she says.
The prosecutor has already made it clear that she will request a life sentence.
– She was a young woman with her whole life ahead of her.
The man’s parents have denied in questioning with the police that they had any problem with the relationship. They will later be heard during the trial.