warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Note: Romani kris (kris = court) should not be confused with Romani CRISS(a Romanian organization for Romani rights) or Romani chib (the language).
This answer is based on available information about the Romani crisis in Sweden.
In the summer of 2022, a woman is brutally killed by a car. Her two sons are charged with deliberately hitting and killing their mother. The prosecutor claims it was an honor crime within the Roma group involved. What does it take to prove an honor motive?
Two brothers in their 20s are supected of killin their own mother and seriously injures he boyfriend.
The prosecutor suspects that there is a motive.
The plaintiffs entered into a relationship. this relationship is not accepted by the family.
What is the difference between a murder and an honor killing?
Neither the brothers nor the relatives accept the new relationship.
There was no intent to harm or kill her.
If two people are in a car and the one holding the wheel deliberately hits someone, then both are murders?
We’re here near the crime scene where the two brothers are sitting and waiting in a car on that day , but this event actually begins much earlier.
The mother of the brothers has met a new man ,but according to the family traditions, she is still married to to her old husband, that is , the brother’s father.
According to the preliminary investigation the mother announced this in July of the same year trough facebook and it gets strong reactions.
Threats are being made over social media, an according to the investigation,the brothers are also involved in those threats.
The defendants are the sons of one of the plaintiffs and the other plaintiff is the mother’s new husband, the background and relationships between the paintiffs and the defendants are of great importance.
It is primarily these two brothers who who are being charged with murder and attempt murder. then it’s grandfather and gramdmother who are blamed for gross misconduct among other things.
The mother and the mother’s new husband are being attacked because neiter the brother nor the relatives accept the new relationship.
The mother and her new boyfriend are sitting in her apartment and the brothers know this because they saw her live on facebook .
The brothers therefore go there to confront their mother and the younger brother films,among other things, when the older brother confronts the mother.
And in the film you can also hear him saying that if he hasn’t come in an hour, he’s going to set fire to the place.
The two brothers will then wait .
After a while ,the mother and boyfriend out and the brothers then see them and the older brother starts the car and drives up .
The younger brother sits in the passenger seat while the older brother increases speed and steers straight towards the mother and boyfriend.
And the car drives into the couple and hits them.
The mother suffers extensive fractures in base of the scull and internal bleeding in the brain and shortly after the collision she dies.
The boyfriend also suffer open fractures and bleeding , but despite the injuries, he survives.
In this particular case it was important for prosecution to investgate the honor motive because the honor motive is strongly linked to complicity.
Why is it not only the driver but also the passanger who who is responsible for the collision?
And if you don’t understand the honor structure and the honor motive, which explains the event that led up to the collision itself , then you can’t understand what happened in this.
So ,what is honor oppression?
Honot oppression is a form of oppression that is practiced to avoid social death.
In a family that cannot convince those around them, that shares the same concepts of honor , habit, honor, shame, shamelessness, loses its reputation, loses face then.
And you are laughed at , you are ridiculed by the collective that shares the same concept of honorable habits.
If you don’t go to the collective to restore violated, questioned, honnor, then you are prepared to even go so far as to take of someone , usually a family member.
Often a female family member or an outsider who has had a sexual relation, a love relationship with a close woman .
But it sounde like it is connected to women’s sexuality in different ways and men’s control of it.
You could say that there are two watersheds between honor-related oppression and wet and other fors of violence.
One is that the family gives itsefl the right and is given the right to harm its child and even take the life of its child when the honor endangers is at stake.
The other is that girls and women , in an honorific context are denied the right to their sexuality fertility.
And in those in those contects , it is usually close relatives who,due to gender segregation, have access to women’s bodie’s and sexuality.
And the rule is in the context of honor that it is the women who is punished then.
In Sweden , since 2020 , we have received honor motives as a particularly aggravating circumstance when assessing the value of a sentence.
This means that the court must particularly consider whether honor was a motive for the crime.
In this particular case , the prosecutor believes that the motive for the brother’s crimes was to restore honor.
The prosecutor also believes that this honor motive influences the assessment of the younger brother’s actions.
That the honor motive ,so to speak , brings together the brother’s intentions.
That is, they have acted according to a common plan to restore their honor by killing their mother.
But how should the defense tackle the issue of honor motives?
And how will that issue affect the younger brother’s guilt?
The defense argued that these were acts that were about completely different things, partly, their position was that the mother .- there was no intent to harm or kill her .
But the intention was to harm her boyfriend and it was based on a conflict between the principal and this boyfriend.
The essence of the younger brother’s defense case or his line of defense was to show that my principal was not aware that the brother would act in this way.
The older brother confesses about the mother.
Aggravated manslaghter and, in the of the boyfriend, aggravated assault.
But in a fair legal system, it is always the prosecutor who has the full burden of proof.
This means that it is entirely up to the prosecutor to present the evidence needed to possibly convict for murder.
If the evidence is not sufficient, the court must aquit completely or sentence to a less serious crime.
In this case, gross negligence causing the death of another person.
The trial starts on march 15, 2023.
In this case ,they talk about there being something called;
a romani crisis,as far as we understand some kind of trial .
It is a special institution, a legal institution that is informal and parallel to the current legal system .
That when disputes arise, usually financial disputes but also disputes about adultery and so on .
Most often it is about financial compensation to those who own the woman and the woman’s sexuality.
And then a penalty is imposed,if it is a woman who has behaved in an honorable manner or a man who has had an extramarital relationship.
Then the man should, above all ,pay some forme of compensation, if the man does not do this, then, he is considered unclean.
And what does impurity mean?
That person does not belong to the colective then , you exclude the person from the moral community.
In swedish law , it is not enough to have committed an objective act to be convicted of a crime.
The act must also be covered by intent, that is, it must have been done intentionally.
And how do you prove that?
How do you prove what has been in someone else’s head?
How do you prove intent?
Well , yes, it is the prosecutor who should do that and in this trial ,the prosecutor will try to do that by looking at what was said and started before,but above all,the direction of travel and the speed of the car.
In this case,the tool of crime is a car.
And it is an odd tool of crime.
Experts examine the car and in the end they were able to comment on the car’s estamted speed of the collision and they concluded that it was 70 km /h plur or minus 10 km/ h.
Why is the questioning of this expert so important?
Well, because if the speed of the car was high, it strengthens the prosecutor’s claim that the collision was intentional.
That is , on purpose.
Everyone can understaand that if you rive a car at high speed and hit someone , the consequences will be extremely serious, for this reason, it is very important for the defense to reduce the evidentiary value of what the expert says.
How certain can he really be about the speed of the car?
The conclusion of the defense wa that it’s not possible.
It was not possible to determine with those parameters how fast the car had been driving.
The defense is thus trying to cast doubt on the prosecutor’s claim that the speed can be determined retrospectively with any greater precision, but the prosecutor also claims that there are other circumstances besides speed that indicate intent to kill or injure.
Things that should have been said and written before then and to get this out , the prosecution has to pressure the older brother into questioning.
According to the police investigation , it has been common for this Roma group to communicate via live broadcastings on facebook.
And the prosecutor claims claims that the younger brother’s task was precisely to document the course of events in this way ,and that’s also what happens.
Because before the mother is hit , the younger brother turns on his mobile camera.
The older brother has already accepted responsibility for aggrevated assault in the case of the boyfriend and aggravated manslaughter in the case of the mother.
but a crime of commission is not the same as an intentional crime, this means that he means that he did not want to hit the mother and either did he want to or be indifferent to the fatal outcome.
The prosecutor is trying to show,using information such as the speed of the car and what was written and said before the incident- that he had intended the entire act,including the fatal outcoum.
And te prosecutor also referred to the video that the brothers recorded in connection with the incident.
The drive takes place and seconds later the brothers do a live broadcast.
It is primarily the older brother who speaks in this live broadcast and there he explains that he cheated on his mother and her mother’s new boyfriend .
And that he has been avenged ,They have taken revenge and now they have learned that you don’t do that to the brothers.
An important question for the older brother was this motive he was very upset that prosecutors and police came out early and called this an honor-related crime.
And for him it was important that it was not considered an honor -related crime , because his view was that we don’t commit that kind of crime in our society, so to speak.
We are Roma, that’s what it was all about here and in that context , it was also important to uncover the real motive for what happened.
The older brother were very angry when he posted this live broadcast , he said ” against everyone”.
Which ones did he mean then?
He said ” family, those who continue to spread the film”
So, What movie is he talking about?
There are a lot of live broadcasts , this is how people communicate within the Romani culture to a large extent.
And in some of these broadcasts, a film about the older brother- just a sex movie, with him and his wife in a private situation, simply.
Those who were behind it, those who spread t his film and also urged other Roma to exlude the older brother and his family,it was the boyfriend and people close to him.
The older brother feel to compelled to do something about it so that people undertand that these are the consequences when you keep sharing this film .continues to spread.
And who did he wanted to show this to? to everyone .
This is the defense’s alternative explanation for the collision.
Could it be that this is not about honor, but pure revenge?
In that case , the mother was not the target ,but only the boyfriend.
And hitting the mother was a pure mistake , so not a premeditated crime and therefore not murder as the prosecution claims.
And then we are left with the second big question …
Will the prosecutor be able to prove the younger brother’s guilt ,that he acted and committed this crime in concert with his older brother?
The younger brother sounds noticeably affected by what has happened, at the same time,it is undisputed that he was involved in distributing threats together with other relatives on social media.
But he himself claims that it had to do with him not wanting to be exluded from the community
There are other circumstances that are also relevant .
The prosecutor claimed, among other things, that he attempted to record the actaul course of events on video shortly before the collision but was unsuccessful because he dropped his phone.
This could be an important piece of the puzzle for the prosecutor.
The younger brother goes to his cell phone, picks it up and says to his brother ” drive” and meanwhile the older brother says,”i’ve killed them, we have killed them”.
And those are , among other things , the circumstances that show that he was involved in this.
At the time, rickardo was a child , when he was arrested he had just turned 17.he was a very sensitive person who, in terms of maturity, perhaps hadn’t reached a maturity that a 17 year old should.
The defense is getting out that the younger brother had nothing against the mother’s relationship and again that he felt compelled to make the threats he made.
The prosecution? wanted to involve the younger brother in the honor motive.
And in this way make him an accomplice that he acted together and in agreement with his older brother.
And here, the prosecutor has another card to play,which again deals with the honor motive.
Namely that the mother’s new relationship was not accepted , but that should be punished vith violance.
So, this is interesting, because ,according to the boyfriend such a called the Romani crisis,an informal trial where he was ordered to pay a certain amount of money to the brother’s father after the realationship became known.
And this then seems like a norm of honor has regulated what women and men were allowed to do .
But tha’ts not the same thing as the norm of honor approving violence, it seems more about resolving conflicts with money.
And in that case perhaps the collision was motivated by honor.
Based on the concept of honor that is in the penal bcode and that is also the concept that the courts base their trials on .
It’s about patriarchal power.
It’s about preserving or restoring the honor of te family ,lineage r the grouo heder .
It’s characterized by the fact that there’se a strong collectivist element to the whole thing and that means that the individual’s interest and actions are subordinate to the group’s family interest.
And an important issue here is usually the woman’s sexuality and woman’s activites and it’s the men who want to keep an eye on the women.
The expert says that violence seems to be a normal feature in this circle when an aount has been sentenced but not paid.
And the mother’s boyfriend also claimed that this was the case .
But ow it is cross – examination , that is , the defense’s interrogation and here the defense has its chance to reduce the evidentiary value of the expert’s claim.
It has been a long and emotional main hearing where over 30 people have been heard, but before the verdict , the central questions remains .
Will the older brother be convicted of murder or a crime that caue it?
Should this be considered a crime motivation by honor or not ?
And will the younger brother be convicted? or aquitted completely?
The verdict against the two brothers who were charged having run over and killed their own mother Hisingen i Gotenburg.
The older of the two brother’s , a 22 year old is sentenced to life imprisonment, the younger brothers acquitted of the crime.
Now, he is convicted of the murder of his mother and attempted murder and he is also sentenced to the strictest punishment in the law, it is clear that is a setback on several levels.
The prosecutor demanded 14 year in prison for the younger brother even though he was a child ,the defense thought that was completely outrages.
During the trial , the prosecutor claimed that it was a matter of honor in the Roma culture that she describes those involved as being a part of.
But that resoning was rejected by the court.
The evidence in the court of appeal is basically the ams as in the district court , exept that the older brother refers to a statement by a psychologist who is also heard.
But the difficlt question concerns the honor motive.
Will the court of appeal ,based on largely exactly the same material , come to a different conclusion than the district court did?
The high profile case wherea mother was run over to death on issingen in Gotenburg the court of appeal today upholds the district court’s verdict .
But to unlike the district court the court of Appeal also believes that the crimes were committed with honor motives.
On September 27 ,2023, the court of Appeal for the western Sweden announces its verdict.
The older brother is convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment ,and as for the younger brother , the prosecution is rejected just as the district court did and acquitted of urder.
But the court of Appeal makes a different assessment of the honor issue than the district court .
The court of Appeal believes thast it has been shown that in the group mentioned here there are strong patriarchal structures and women’s sexuality is a concern for the entire group.
And writes the court of appeal :
It is therefore shown that honor , as the legislator intended, has been the motive behind the crimes.
The court of appeal concludes that just becaue honor is rarely a motive for murder, it can sometime be , as in this case.