Police in the Swedish municipality of Vimmerby have arrested and charged a well-known politician from the liberal, pro-mass migration Center Party with multiple counts of child rape.
The man, who has yet to be identified, was arrested at his home last Friday at approximately 11:00 a.m. over crimes that are believed to have taken place from 2012 to 2015. At present, he remains in police custody on probable cause for repeated cases involving child rape and gross breach of the peace, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reports.
When asked to assess the status of the investigation, prosecutor Charlotte Genberg told local newspaper Dagens Vimmerby that the evidence collected against the defendant was solid, noting that authorities seized multiple electronic devices from the individual.
Gotenberg said that the defendant is believed to have had a close relationship with the victim. She also mentioned that investigators were interviewing witnesses in the case and that authorities will have two weeks to bring formal charges against the suspect.
“We will see if there is anything that is of interest to the investigation regarding the digital seizures, then we will see where we go from there. It is at an early stage, but it looks good, and I think the evidence situation is good,” Genberg said.
According to a report from Swedish newspaper Expressen, the accused man is in his 40s, is a member of the council governing Vimmerby, and sits on the board of the liberal Center Party for the municipality.
“This was new information for us that we became aware of through the media. It really is a heinous crime which he is suspected of. There is already an exclusion case against this person due to previous problems he caused,” representatives from the Center Party said in response to the arrest.
The politician so far has denied all charges.
Several politicians for the liberal, pro-mass migration Center Party have been linked to pedophilia. In December 2020, it was revealed that Fredrick Federley, a former EU parliamentary for Center Party and vice president of the liberal Renew Europe group, and Chris Yrjas, a municipal leader for the Center Party, had been living with convicted pedophiles.
Federley had been living with a man who had been convicted of 22 aggravated rapes against children, two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of children, six counts of sexual harassment, and 38 counts of aggravated child pornography.
Despite claims by Federley that he had been unaware of the man’s unspeakable convictions, Center Party’s party secretary Michael Arthursson admitted to Swedish state broadcaster SVT that Federley had in fact known about the man’s background “for a long time”.
In April 2020, the Swedish news portal Samnytt reported that Denny Olofsson — a 63-year-old former member of the Center Party with several party assignments — had been sentenced to prison after being convicted of raping an underage girl several times.
Two years earlier, in August 2018, Bo Gunnar Hedlund, a 44-year-old who at the time had been serving on the municipal council in Hällesfor for several terms, was reported to have been sentenced to prison for sexually exploiting an underage girl who was a resident at a foster home. For his crimes, Hedlund was sentenced to just one and a half years in prison.
