Swedish doc accuses police of misconduct

Police officers who investigated a doctor accused of the manslaughter of a baby at a Stockholm hospital last year are now themselves facing a misconduct probe over the way they handled the doctor after she was arrested.

• Doc acquitted of having caused baby's death (21 Oct 11)
• Baby 'euthanasia' trial opens in Stockholm (13 Sep 11)
• Children's hospital faces probe over baby death (22 Jan 10)

The officers allegedly failed to tell the paediatrician of the nature of the accusations against her and acted in a threatening manner at the time of her arrest.

"One of them snapped at me saying that I should not act as though I didn't know what it was about, after having done what I did," she told the the Läkartidningen medical journal .

The three-month-old baby was born prematurely, unconscious and with serious brain damage, and died in September of 2008 shortly after her birth.

The paediatrician was then charged with manslaughter, suspected of deliberately having administered a high dose of the anaesthetic Pentothal in combination with morphine, in order to speed up the baby's death.

A lengthy and complicated investigation started, and on October 21st 2011 the doctor was unanimously acquitted by the Solna District Court.

The doctor's complaints have now been taken up by prosecutors.

Chief Prosecutor Håkan Roswall at the National Prosecution Authority (Åklagarmyndigheten) said to the journal that they are currently investigating the police on six specific points.

In addition to failing to inform her of the accusations and acting in a threatening matter, the doctor complained that police confiscated some of her belongings but never gave her an official list of the things they had appropriated.

She is also very critical of the way police and pathologists in the case have speculated publicly about medical treatments, how medical journals are kept and how specific drugs are administered, outside of their fields of expertise, which became evident from a tape which was released some time into the investigation, according to the journal.

If the police officers are found to be guilty of misconduct, they could face hefty fines or up to two years in prison.

Prosecutors say the volume of evidence - the case file runs to over a thousand pages - means it may take months to establish what charges, if any, can be made against the officers.