A mother, father, and two adult children from a Palestinian family in Örebro are facing trial for unlawful deprivation of liberty after allegedly kidnapping their 20-year-old daughter and keeping her monitored because she wanted to integrate into Western society.
On April 30, police in Hallsberg were alerted after witnesses saw two men forcefully drag a young woman into a car. Swedish outlet Samnytt reported how one witness followed the vehicle and helped police track it down within ten minutes. Officers stopped the car and found five family members inside, including the frightened young woman who showed signs of struggle.
The father, 58, was driving with the 54-year-old mother in the front seat. In the back sat three of their children, including the 20-year-old victim. Though she initially downplayed the incident, saying it had been “a little argument,” investigators soon discovered she had been living in sheltered housing to escape years of strict control.
According to social services documents, the young woman grew up under constant surveillance, forced to wear a headscarf, and never allowed out alone or to choose her friends. She dreamed of becoming a social worker and living independently, something her family opposed.
In 2023, she was taken against her will to Gaza, but managed to return via Egypt when war broke out. Back in Sweden, she fled between women’s shelters, but her family tracked her down repeatedly, even hacking her SIM card, email, and social media accounts.
An initially attempted kidnapping in 2024 failed.
Phone messages and chats obtained by investigators reveal the family’s hostility toward her independence. In one exchange, the father wrote in Arabic: “She must have her head cut off!” He later told police this was not meant literally, claiming it reflected a cultural way of speaking. In other messages, the older brother complained about her embracing Swedish identity, writing that “She loves Sweden and being Swedish.” The older sister suggested smuggling her abroad.
Prosecutors have now charged the father, mother, and brother with unlawful detention over the April abduction, while the sister is charged with aiding and abetting. The father also faces a separate charge for attempted unlawful detention linked to last year’s failed kidnapping, and the brother has admitted to hacking her online accounts.
The family, who came to Sweden from Gaza in the 2000s, are now Swedish citizens, and thus, none can be deported even if found guilty.
Honor-related crimes have become commonplace in Sweden in recent years.
In May last year, three Afghan nationals from the same family were arrested on suspicion of murdering their 25-year-old female relative in an “honor killing” before burning and dumping her body in the woods.
This May, seven people were charged in connection with the suspected honor killing of a woman in Eskilstuna after she attempted to divorce her husband. The victim was found strangled at her home in September 2024.
Also this year, Svea Court of Appeal in Sweden upheld a lower court ruling acquitting three Afghan-born individuals of the murder of Ako Abbas, a 37-year-old man whose dismembered body was discovered in a suitcase in a wooded area on Värmdö in March 2024.
The verdict leaves no one convicted of the killing itself, despite significant circumstantial evidence and allegations of an honor-related motive. All three defendants, however, were convicted of lesser charges related to the killing.
