Sweden: Migrant Avoids Deportation Over ‘Too Short’ Rape

After arriving in Sweden as an asylum seeker when he was a minor, Eritrean migrant Yazied Mohamed raped Meya Åberg in September last year, when she was just 16 years old, while she was on her way back home from work.

According to the Court of Appeal for Upper Norrland, this attack was not “extremely serious”—and so does not warrant deportation—because of its “duration.” This prompted commentator Ian Miles Cheong to note that “the suffering of a 16 year old is now measured in minutes”—a sign of “how far the system has fallen.”

On the ‘seriousness’ of the crime, it is surely worth highlighting that Åberg, now 17, afterwards barely went to school for a year, is still haunted by nightmares and—in her own words—is “really scared to go out and walk by myself.”

Mohamed was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for rape, and must pay a 240,000 Swedish kronor ($25,520) fine to his young victim.

One of the nämdemän (lay judges), Sammy Lie (SD, of course), disagreed with the court’s decision, saying: “I believe that the crime is a particularly serious crime and that it would pose a serious danger to public order and security to allow Yazied Mohamed to remain in Sweden.”

In the Swedish judicial system, nämdemän are ordinary citizens appointed by political parties who sit alongside professional judges in certain courts to help decide cases, bringing a layperson’s perspective to the judgment.

Croatian MEP Stephen Nikola Bartulica has argued that the judges in this case must be “held accountable” for rejecting the deportation. It is, of course, most likely that they won’t be.

American women’s safety advocate Meaghan Mobbs also responded to the case by insisting that “when a child’s suffering is minimised in the name of tolerance, the West betrays the very values it claims to uphold.”