The 20-year-old woman was found dead in her apartment in the seventh month of pregnancy with a lamp cord wrapped around her neck.
Her 22-year-old boyfriend is now sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering her, according to the verdict to preserve family honor.
"The prosecutor has through robust evidence shown that the 22-year-old man murdered his pregnant girlfriend and that the fetus in the womb died as a result," says Lars-Gunnar Lundh, judge at Örebro District Court, in a press release.
The court also finds, like the prosecutor, that the murder was honor-related and that the man was under "strong pressure from the family not to be with a white woman."
The evidence consists, according to the court, of a range of indicators, including the man's DNA on the victim's clothes and under her nails.
The forensic medical examination shows that she was subjected to prolonged strangulation, which, according to the court, resulted in severe suffering and makes the crime "particularly inconsiderate."
It was the victim's mother who found her on the bedroom floor on April 2023. She had searched for her for several hours and finally gained access to the unlocked apartment.
The daughter lies dead on the bedroom floor with a lamp cord around her neck and a marble table over her.
Already in the first panicked emergency call, the mother points out the victim's boyfriend as the perpetrator. He is arrested as a suspect for murder the same day and has been in custody since then.
According to prosecutor Elisabeth Andersson, the 22-year-old man killed the woman by choking and strangling her. Among the evidence are traces from the apartment and analyses of how he handled his phones at the time of the crime.
The man had kept the relationship a secret from his parents, who are from Somalia. But the day before the murder, he told the victim that he would tell his parents about the pregnancy and that they would move in together.
"It feels like I almost feel my heart beating all the way down to my stomach," he writes in an SMS to the girlfriend the same day. She responds and tries to calm him down by telling him that his parents love him and that they will understand.
But instead of talking to his parents, he went to the girlfriend's apartment and murdered her, allegedly partially to "preserve or restore his and his family's honor."
The man denies the crime and the defense has argued that there is no evidence that binds the 22-year-old man to the murder. The parents have denied in interrogations that they would have opposed the relationship.
