When the news of the shooting in Copenhagen, which left three dead and four seriously injured, is still resounding, the Nordic countries are once again the scene of an aggression that sows terror among the population. Swedish police announced today that a woman in her 60s has died from a knife attack in broad daylight on the island of Gotland. A place where the main politicians of the country meet for a week.
“Unfortunately, I can inform you that a woman has succumbed to her injuries,” said Gotland Police Chief Fredrik Persson at a press conference where the motivations behind the events were not clarified, although it was reported that A 33-year-old man was arrested shortly after the incident and was suspected of murder, AFP reported.
“A thorough investigation is currently underway. This includes establishing the motive and background of the arrested person,” the police chief continued. He added that investigators were looking at a number of questions, including “how did it happen in a very public place, where there were a lot of people in the center of Visby in broad daylight”. Persson admitted that a political motive could not be ruled out at this early stage of the investigation, but he did not elaborate.
Police also said they did not believe the events were related to Almedalen Week, an annual event that brings together Sweden’s elite and where political parties often present their new policies and launch their campaigns.
According to Swedish outlet Aftonbladet, the man arrested for the knife attack is a 33-year-old Nazi. Police declined to comment on whether the subject’s activities linked to right-wing extremism had anything to do with the attack. The same medium points out that on social networks the aggressor has expressed on several occasions that he denies that the Holocaust had occurred. Along the same lines, the Expressen newspaper reports that the suspect had links to the neo-Nazi group NMR, something that the police did not want to comment on either.
However, all theories remain open, since the latest media reports that the man, who lives in southern Sweden, would not have been convicted of any crime before nor would he have a known connection to the victim. The police conclusion, according to Expressen, is that the man suffers from mental illness.
Precisely, the Danish citizen who sowed chaos last Sunday in Copenhagen ended up in preventive detention in a psychiatric hospital and the “terrorist act” was ruled out.
Almedalen is a park in the Swedish city of Visby, on the island of Gotland, and is known for annually hosting Almedalen Week, a political celebration in which politicians and organizations meet to discuss proposals. An act of great relevance whose source of inspiration was the impromptu meetings of the politician Olof Palme, who was spending the summer in Visby.
This name carries over to another open wound in Sweden. When he was prime minister, Palme was shot dead in the street of Stockholm, on February 28, 1986. The regional director, Peter Lindvall, assured that there are no signs of threats directed at the annual political event held in Almedalen park and that it will not be suspended. “We don’t plan to suspend it, there is one day left as you know. We also haven’t received any indication from the police that there would be more threats,” he said during a news conference.
Nor can it be avoided when reading what happened in Almedalen to remember what happened on the island of Utoya (Norway). There Anders Breivik sowed terror in a camp organized by the youth division of the Norwegian Labor Party (AP).
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