Featured photo: The centre of Visby (Photo by Marcel Burger)
The killing of Ing-Marie Wieselgren, the psychiatric care coordinator of Sweden’s municipalities and regions, is officially classed as a terror attack. If convicted, the 32-year-old arrested suspect – a ultright radical known to have ties with the violent Nordic neo-nazi organisation NMR – faces up to life imprisonment.
Ing-Marie Wiselgren was killed with a knive on 6 July this year, during the yearly Almedals week in Visby, on Gotland. This Swedish political tradition brings many politicians, lobby organisations and others every year in summer to the Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. It is named after the area Almedal of Visby, where or nearby also Wiselgren took part in events.
According to the Swedish national security service Säpo and the public prosecutor arrested suspect Theodor E. carefully planned his attack, and had several alternative ideas in case his main plan would not work out. Swedish authorities confirmed the suspect has confessed having killed Wiselgren, and the prosecutor sees enough evidence the attack by the NMR-alligned Theodor E. was a deliberate act of terror.
Sweden has had a small share of terror attacks so far, most noteworthy was the killing of five people in the Stockholm city centre on 7 April 2017 by an Uzbeki who used a beer delivering truck he just stole before.
Life imprisonment means effectively 16 to 25 years in jail, with the possibility for additional penalties like forced psychiatric treatment to keep criminals off the streets. Currently, about 150 people in Sweden are behind bars for life. | © 2022 Marcel Burger, nordicreporter.com (text and photo)