An Iraqi father accused of beating, imprisoning, and threatening to kill his daughter after she refused an arranged marriage has been arrested in Sweden on a European warrant issued by Italian authorities.
The 52-year-old man was tracked down by Taranto State Police after the authorities in southern Italy opened an investigation into domestic abuse and forced marriage following a complaint from the young woman last November.
As reported by Il Giornale, prosecutors say the victim told officers her father had demanded she marry a Kurdish man selected by him and had threatened her with death if she resisted or tried to flee abroad.
The woman had traveled from Iraq to join her family in Taranto, but investigators say she soon found herself trapped in what police described as a family campaign to force her into submission.
According to the allegations, her relatives sided with her father because they believed she wanted to live in a way that was too “Western” and incompatible with their cultural expectations.
When she refused to obey, her father allegedly held her captive inside an apartment in the southern Italian city and subjected her to violence that left her with injuries requiring 15 days to recover.
Police also believe the pressure became so severe that the young woman was forced to give up work and began a life of isolation, fuelled by fear over her safety.
The young woman gave evidence under protected arrangements before being moved to a secure facility, where she remains.
Investigators later discovered the father had left Italy for Sweden. Swedish authorities arrested him on the European warrant issued after a precautionary detention order by a judge in Taranto.
The case is the latest in a string of forced marriage scandals across Europe involving migrant families accused of using threats, violence, and isolation to control young women who refuse marriages arranged by relatives.
In October last year, a Bangladeshi couple living in Rimini was placed under house arrest after prosecutors accused them of forcing their daughter into marriage in Bangladesh and subjecting her to threats, abuse, and drugs intended to induce pregnancy.
The 20-year-old woman was taken into protective custody after allegedly being tricked into traveling to Bangladesh under the false pretense of visiting a sick relative.
Once there, prosecutors say, her parents confiscated her documents and forced her to marry a wealthy man more than 20 years older than her. The wedding was held on Dec. 17, 2024.
Italian investigators allege she was threatened and abused before and after the ceremony. She was also reportedly given medication intended to promote pregnancy and sedatives to reduce her resistance to sex with her husband.
The young woman secretly began taking contraceptives and eventually managed to contact a health center in Rimini through Instagram, triggering contact with Italian authorities. She later convinced her mother to bring her back to Italy by claiming she would feel “more at peace” and ready to have children if she returned.
Forced marriage fears have also escalated in Germany, where Berlin authorities warned last summer that the school holidays are a danger period for young people being taken abroad and married against their will.
Women’s rights advocate Seyran Ates warned that the problem was growing amid mass immigration and the spread of parallel communities.
“I fear the numbers will continue to rise,” she told German broadcaster RBB, as cited by Junge Freiheit.
“In Germany, we speak of a parallel society of the Muslim community,” she said, adding that forced marriage is a tool used by “archaic patriarchal societies” to enforce religious norms and control female sexuality.
Berlin’s Neukolln district also sounded the alarm, warning that young people could be taken out of the country during the holidays to be married in their parents’ country of origin, often with no clear way back.
“Most of the affected girls and boys grew up in Germany,” the district office said.
District Mayor Martin Hikel said, “Forced and early marriages are human rights violations that we do not tolerate. But, we know that they are a reality for Neukolln’s young people.”
🇬🇷 "There were 40-year-olds in facilities for unaccompanied minors, drug trafficking, and the relatives of a 15-year-old girl organized her stoning because she resisted a forced marriage."
Greek minister Eirini Agapidaki recalls the horrors that unfolded at the Moria migrant… pic.twitter.com/Pp1qC76e0M
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 28, 2026In Greece, a government minister recently described another horrifying case from the 2019 migrant crisis, claiming a teenage girl in the Moria camp on Lesbos was almost stoned after refusing a forced marriage.
Eirini Agapidaki said the camp had descended into “absolute chaos” at the time.
“I honestly don’t want to talk about what I saw and what I found there, because they are very, very ugly things,” she said. “They expose the country.”
Agapidaki claimed the girl had effectively been sold into marriage by her mother.
“A mother had agreed to marry off her 15-year-old daughter to someone there,” she said. “And because the girl resisted, the community organized a stoning.”
The minister said she only learned of the case after the girl had been removed from the camp and placed in a shelter for unaccompanied minors.
