During Easter weekend this year, a Swedish mother and her two-year-old daughter were kidnapped outside their home in Strängnäs. Now a total of seven men are sentenced to prison after the incident, which is suspected to be linked to the Somali gang Death Squad.
On the morning of April 17 this year, a 22-year-old woman in Strängnäs is on her way to preschool with her two-year-old daughter.
She is about to strap her daughter into the car seat when a car suddenly pulls up behind her. A man steps out and orders:
“Get in the car!”
There are several men in the car, and she is alone with her daughter. She dares not do anything other than obey and follows the three men.
Ex-boyfriend’s debt
The kidnapped woman and her daughter are driven over 40 miles to Gothenburg. There, the woman receives five hundred kronor in cash to buy what she needs for herself and her daughter at a grocery store.
While the young mother is in the store, the kidnappers hold her two-year-old daughter hostage. One of them can be seen in surveillance images carrying the little girl around.
Afterwards, the woman and her daughter are taken to a cottage in Kyrkeby outside Kungälv, where they are held captive for nearly four days.
The woman learns that her ex-boyfriend owes several million kronor to the criminal Somali-founded network Death Squad. And that she and her daughter have been kidnapped to force the repayment of the debt.
A transport to Norway, unclear with what, has gone wrong. But in any case, it is the woman’s former boyfriend who has been blamed for it. Different ways are being discussed to compel him to pay.
They tie the woman’s hands behind her back, tape her mouth, take a picture, and send it to her relatives. They also discuss filming while they rape her, in order to put pressure on the family.
Stormed by the National Task Force
Meanwhile, in Strängnäs, the police have already launched an investigation. Relatives have seen the kidnapped woman’s car outside her home, with the side rear door open. They understand that something is not right.
The investigators suspect that something has happened to her and that it is related to her former boyfriend.
An extensive police operation leads the police’s suspicions to the cottage outside Kungälv. It has been booked through AirBNB, and the police suspect that it is in that cottage where the woman and her daughter are being held captive.
In the afternoon of April 20, the cottage is surrounded by officers from the National Task Force. A drone monitors the area, snipers take up positions outside, field medics and ambulances stand ready at a breaking point.
And then, at half past midnight on the 21st, the cottage is stormed in dramatic fashion. A distraction grenade is thrown in, and then the kidnappers are arrested while the woman and her daughter are freed. Unharmed.
Seven convicted
Now, four men are sentenced for the kidnapping of the 22-year-old woman and her daughter. One of the convicted is the 22-year-old elite football player Exauce Bokunyungu.
He is identified as the main defendant and is sentenced to six years and eleven months in prison. Ali Ise, 23, and Benjamin Patay, 22, are also sentenced for kidnapping to five years and five months each.
A fourth person, 20-year-old Diu Ngong, is sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for aiding and abetting kidnapping. He was the one who booked the AirBNB cottage where the woman and her daughter were held captive.
In addition to these four, three men aged between 21 and 25 are convicted of kidnapping in the same case. However, they are convicted of kidnapping another person.
The convicted in that case are Aghyad Saad, Ahmad Sarjin, and Abrham Woldeghebriel. The three are sentenced to four years and five months, four years, and three years and eleven months in prison, respectively.
READ ALSO: Indictment: Mother and two-year-old daughter kidnapped in Strängnäs