Swedish girl, 15, and four teenage brothers are jailed after gang lured taxi driver, 26, into the woods and hanged him in revenge for raping her

A 15-year-old girl and four teenage brothers have been jailed in Sweden for luring a taxi driver to a remote forest and killing him in revenge for allegedly raping her.

The court in Uppsala, near Stockholm, ruled that the 26-year-old driver was led to a nature reserve near Enkoping on March 24 with the promise of “sexual services.”

He was overpowered, strangled and hanged by four people aged between 15 and 18 with a rope noose they had bought the day before, the court heard.

During the trial, all five pleaded their innocence, but the girl admitted that she thought the brothers would only beat him up.

The eldest, now 19, was sentenced to life in prison. Two 16-year-olds were sentenced to four years in closed youth care, and the 15-year-old brother and his girlfriend were each sentenced to three years and six months in closed youth care.

The court convicted all five based on prosecutors’ circumstantial evidence, ruling that they had deliberately tried to disguise the murder as a suicide.

The three older brothers were eventually found guilty of murder for their involvement.

The girl and her boyfriend turned out not to have been at the scene, but were convicted of complicity in the murder.

The prosecutor presented text messages between the group as evidence of their involvement.

Four days before the taxi driver disappeared, the girl texted a friend: “His brothers are going to meet my rapist,” apparently referring to her friend.

One of the young men said, “We have to do that on Friday.” Another replied: ‘Okay.’

The girl allegedly sent the taxi driver a text message at the end of March asking him to meet her with a bottle of vodka at a parking lot near the Hjälstaviken nature reserve in southeastern Sweden.

There, the court ruled, the men ambushed him, strangled him and hanged him with a rope. Prosecutors said his death would likely have caused severe suffering.

His car was later found on March 26, covered in snow with the taxi’s meter still running, LBC reported.

His body was later found 500 meters away in a wooded part of the reserve on April 1.

All five denied involvement, but Lars Holmgård, president of the Uppsala District Court, ruled that the brothers had premeditated the murder since they bought the rope.

‘The plan must have been over [the victim] in our opinion to be hung by the rope,” he said saidthe BBC reports.

The court heard how the boys had also bought masking tape and clothing in preparation for the murder.

The evidence presented also included telephone signals and DNA traces of both the driver and the brothers, found on a jacket.

The brothers reportedly told some of their friends that they were going to kill a rapist, and later told them that they had done so.

“Together, this cumulative evidence made it beyond reasonable doubt that all defendants were guilty,” the Uppsala court said in a statement. rack yesterday.

Andreas Pallinder, head of investigations at Uppsala police, admitted that his forces should have taken the rape report seriously.

“If you take it to the extreme, theoretically we could have prevented a murder,” he said at a news conference.

Prosecutors initially believed there may have been a financial motive for the murder, as his money and belongings disappeared from his person.

This line of inquiry was later dropped as it was considered vague.

But court documents show that after the incident, one of the brothers used the deceased’s cell phone to empty his bank account.

Ebru Tok, a lawyer representing the man’s family, said earlier: ‘The family is in great sadness and shock at the unique situation in which such young people are suspected of the murder.

“They hope that the preliminary investigation will provide clarity about the circumstances of the case.”