A woman in her fifties was murdered on Monday evening in the Södra Gryta area of Västerås, central Sweden. Police were alerted shortly before 10 p.m. after reports that two people had been injured with a sharp object. The woman, who suffered severe stab wounds, was taken to hospital but could not be saved. The man, also injured, did not sustain life-threatening wounds.
According to Swedish media, the victim was born in Iran and came to Sweden in 2006 with her husband. The couple had six children together, and the husband had another child from a previous relationship. The woman had been separated from her husband since this spring and filed for divorce in September—her second attempt after an earlier application in 2023 was withdrawn.
Police now suspect that the murder may have been prompted by a so-called honor motive. The family had been known to social services for more than a decade and had been involved in several cases, through which multiple children were taken into state care.
A relative of the victim has been arrested on suspicion of murder, and three others are being investigated as possible accomplices.
Similar incidents have happened in other European countries recently, such as a recent honor killing in Germany, where a Syrian man allegedly ordered his son to murder his sister, claiming she had dishonored the family. The Syrian declared he wanted to “live in a country where people applaud him when he kills his daughter—not in a country where he goes to prison for it.”
