Wednesday, June 5, 2024 -A Somalian refugee who murdered his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend last year in an 'honour killing' has been jailed for life.
Saga Forsgren Elneborg, 20, was found strangled to death at her
home in the city of Örebro in April 2023 in a case that shocked the
Scandinavian country
Prosecutors claimed that her 22-year-old boyfriend Mohamedamin Abdirisek
Ibrahim decided to murder her rather than face the shame of telling his Muslim
family that his girlfriend, believed to be half Thai, half Swedish and
Christian, was expecting his baby.
They alleged that on the night Ibrahim was due to tell his
family about Saga's pregnancy, he went to her flat in Örebro and
strangled her to death by wrapping the cord of her lamp around her neck.
Ibrahim initially tried to pin Saga's death on a gangland killing,
claiming criminals had burst into the apartment and killed her to take the
money he had stashed there.
But the judge and jury in Örebro district court agreed with
prosecutors, announcing this morning that Ibrahim will face life in
prison.
It also transpired during the court proceedings that Ibrahim had frequently met other women during his relationship with Saga and had largely refused to assume any responsibilities as a would-be father.
Prosecutors set forth evidence that Ibrahim had routinely promised
he would move in with Saga after finding out about her pregnancy, yet never
agreed to even spend one whole night with her.
'The prosecutor has shown through robust evidence that the
22-year-old murdered his pregnant girlfriend and that the fetus in the stomach
died as a result,' court president Lars-Gunnar Lundh said in a statement
following Ibrahim's sentencing this morning.
'The prosecutor has also shown that the murder was honour-related, which
the district court considers to be an aggravating assessment of the penalty
value'.
During the trial Ibrahim insisted that Saga was killed by
criminals who forced their way into her apartment, purportedly to steal a bag
of cash he said he'd stashed there.
But prosecutors completely refuted the claims, arguing there was
no evidence of any forced entry at the property.
The alibi presented by Ibrahim was quickly proven false.
The killer reportedly claimed he was out driving with a friend at
the time of Saga's murder, but prosecutors showed that he did not use his phone
for 90 minutes around the incident. In the meantime, the friend in question was
on a phone call with another person and refused to testify in Ibrahim's
defence, according to expressen.se.
Ibrahim's lawyer Soren Abbaszadeh told Swedish broadcaster SVT
that his client would appeal the sentence because he feels he has been wrongly
convicted.
'My client believes that the verdict, regardless of the reasons
for the verdict, is completely wrong and we have therefore immediately
submitted an appeal.'
Lawyers representing Saga's family said they were 'relieved at the
conviction, and that it was a life sentence', describing the verdict as
'fair'.
In case documents, Saga's mother Malisa Elneborg told investigators in a
police interview that she was the one to find her daughter lying dead in her
apartment in the city 100 miles west of Stockholm.
Saga's mother spoke to police in a series of interviews in 2023, the
first being on April 29 - the day after Saga is believed to have been murdered,
on April 28, 2023.
In the interviews, Ms Elneborg recounted how she met up with some of her
friends on Friday, April 28 at a Deli in Örebro, with her daughter Saga
also joining them.
That day, she said, Saga was nervous because she knew that Ibrahim - who
Saga called Amin - planned on telling his parents that he was going to be a
father.
Ms Elneborg told police that Amin had largely kept his relationship with
Saga secret from his family on account of him being a devout Muslim, and Saga
being Christian.
The mother said she had also only met Amin around three times, despite
her daughter being seven months pregnant with his baby at the time of her
death.
Saga's mother said her daughter was nervous while waiting for news, but
had a good time at the deli, chatting with her friends.
She also recalled how Saga repeatedly checked her phone throughout their meeting.
She told the investigating officer that Amin planned on telling his
mother when she got home later that night, as she finished work at around 10pm.
While Saga was still waiting for news, Ms Elneborg and her friends went
on to another establishment in town, she told the police, but Saga decided to
go home back to her apartment to wait for her boyfriend there.
The mother and daughter said their goodbyes, with Ms Elneborg
telling the interviewer that she and her friends wished Saga good luck, not
knowing that was the last time they would see her alive.
The next day, Saturday, April 29 - Ms Elneborg told police that she
went over to her daughter's apartment to pick up some of her things.
She told police that she had been living with her daughter on and off to
help her during her pregnancy, but had left for a couple of nights, Thursday
and Friday (April 27 and 28) so that Amin could stay over and give them
privacy.
When she arrived at the apartment on the Saturday, she was on the phone
to her other daughter and Saga's older sister, Julia Elneborg.
She first rang the doorbell 'just in case Amin is running around naked
in there', she told the police but received no answer.
Ms Elneborg said after not receiving an answer, she got 'irritated' and
shouted through the letterbox. Again, there was no answer.
Instead, she said she used her key to enter the building, but to her
surprise found that the door to the apartment was already unlocked.
'I'm just thinking 'what the hell are they doing?' Because she always
locks the door. Always. Even if she only goes down to the basement, to the
laundry room or down the stairs and collects the mail then she locks.
Always.' Ms Elneborg told police.
The mother then started to look through the apartment, finding a knife
sitting on top of a 'moving box' in the hallway, and the tap in the kitchen
gushing water.
Ms Elneborg said she turned the tap off while calling 'hello, hello?'
into the apartment.
Moments later, she saw her daughter 'lying there'.
Ms. Elneborg said she found Saga's body covered with the tabletop of a
square marble table, something that was pictured in photographs of
the crime scene.
She also said Saga's long black hair was covering her face.
'That's when it just kind of... everything goes so fast,' she told
police. 'I'm shouting at Julia on the phone. 'She's dead, she's dead. They have
murdered Saga.'
'And I just panicked all over when you see your child like that,' she
said, recalling how she moved the table to check if she was still alive.
'And then I sort of see that she has the cord, a lamp cord wrapped
around [her] neck and the lamp is next to her on the right side.'
At this point, Ms Elneborg told police, she started running around
the apartment in panic, her daughter hearing her screams and cries down the
phone, before she hung up and called for the emergency services.
Prosecutors charged Amin with murder and he was convicted and sentenced
to life in prison.
In the indictment, prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson wrote:
'Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim has killed Saga Forsgren Elneborg by suffocating
and strangling her using pressure on her neck with an impact on the trachea and
the blood supply to the head.'
She added in a press release: 'I mean that the murder took place in an
honour context because the man wanted to preserve or restore his and his
family's honour by killing the woman who was carrying his child.'
In text messages to Saga, Ibrahim told her he would tell his
relatives about their relationship and baby on April 28, 2023 - the night of
Saga's murder.
He expressed feeling nervous about telling them and wrote: 'Feels
like I can almost feel my heartbeat all the way down to my stomach.'
Saga tried to reassure him and promised that 'it will be fine'. In
his last text to his girlfriend, Ibrahim claimed he told one person. Saga's
follow-up messages, asking him how it was going and for him to 'talk to me',
remained unanswered.
State prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson said that Ibrahim then went to
Saga's flat, where he 'violently' strangled her to death with the cable of her
bedside lamp, according to local outlet Aftonbladet.
Their baby boy, who weighed 1.7kg at the time and measured just
1.5ft from head to toe, also died inside Saga's womb.
There is no evidence to suggest that Ibrahim's family was either
involved in Saga's murder or that they asked for her to be killed, according to
local media.
Further text messages between the Saga and her alleged killer revealed
that Ibrahim tried to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion shortly after
she got pregnant.
'I know we can make it, but I won't be able to keep my family. If it had
been possible, there would have been no problem with keeping the child,' he
told her.
But Saga was excited about becoming a mother, telling him that she would
have the baby, even without her boyfriend's support, according to Anderson.
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