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CRIME

Swedish rapper Yasin jailed over conspiracy to kidnap rival artist

A Swedish district court on Wednesday jailed rapper Yasin for conspiring to kidnap a rival artist.

Swedish rapper Yasin jailed over conspiracy to kidnap rival artist
A court sketch of rap artist Yasin Mahamoud and his lawyer. Photo: Johan Hallnäs/TT

Yasin Mahamoud was detained on New Year’s Eve for his involvement in the March 2020 kidnapping. He was jailed for 10 months on Wednesday.

He was named Artist of the Year and Hiphop/RnB Artist of the Year at the P3 Guldgalan awards earlier this year organised by Swedish public radio.

According to Wednesday’s verdict, Yasin planned to meet his victim at a recording studio and then lure him into a car in central Stockholm. He denied the charges.

The prosecution said that Yasin “received information, passed on information and had given orders and instructions on how and when” the
kidnapping should be carried out.

The planned kidnapping was ultimately aborted that weekend. The victim was, however, kidnapped several weeks later, but without Yasin’s involvement.

The victim was beaten, robbed, photographed in humiliating conditions and blackmailed, according to prosecutors.

The pictures were leaked on social media several weeks later when the victim refused to pay.

Most of the evidence in the case consisted of chat messages on the encrypted Encrochat service.

The Yasin case was part of a broader one involving 30 suspects in a criminal network accused of a variety of crimes.

On Wednesday, Chihab Lamouri, the leader of the network was sentenced to 17 years and 10 months in prison, while 26 others were sentenced for “serious criminal activity, committed within the network or connected to networked crime during the spring of 2020”.

Among them was another rapper, Haval Khalil, who was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for complicity in kidnapping and robbery of the same artist targeted by Yasin.

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CRIME

Sweden’s ‘snippa’ rape case to go to the High Court

When Sweden's appeals court threw out a guilty verdict in a child rape case over the meaning of 'snippa', a child's word for a vagina, it caused a scandal in Sweden. Now, the Swedish Supreme Court wants to hear from the Court of Appeals about its decision.  

Sweden's 'snippa' rape case to go to the High Court

Attorney General Petra Lundh criticised the appeals court for “a number of serious miscarriages of justice” in the way it dealt with the case. 

The man had been sentenced to three years imprisonment in 2021 after the district court heard how he, in the prosecutor’s words, had “by sticking his hand inside the plaintiff’s shorts and underwear, holding his hand on the the girl’s ‘snippa’ and having a finger inside her ‘snippa’, performed a sexual act” on her. 

The girl’s testimony was found to be credible, in part because she had told her mother about the incident on their way home.

But in February this year, the appeals court threw out the conviction, arguing that it was unclear what the girl means by the word snippa, a word taught to Swedish children to refer to female genitalia.

Despite agreeing with the district court that the man had touched the girl between her legs and inserted his finger into her snippa, the court found that it could not be determined whether the girl was referring to her vulva or to her vagina.

If the man had inserted his finger into her vagina, that would have met the standard to be classified as rape. Because the girl said that his finger was “far in”, but could not state exactly how far, the appeals court found that it could not establish beyond doubt that the man had inserted his finger in her vagina and not her the vulva.

Because no lower-grade charges, such as sexual abuse or molestation, had been filed against the man, the appeals court could not consider other offences.

This week, the Attorney General lodged a complaint with the Supreme Court against the appeal court’s decision. Now the Swedish Supreme Court has given the appeals court until April 12 to explain its decision-making in the case.

The Supreme Court has not decided whether it will hear an appeal against the decision to clear the man of rape charges.

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