Sweden: Ethiopian Man Gets 16 Years for Hacking Ex-Wife With Axe

A 51-year-old Ethiopian man has been sentenced to 16 years in prison in Sweden for striking his ex-wife with an axe as much as 20 times leaving her seriously injured. The below report from Expressen has been translated by Fousesquawk.

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/brottscentralen/hogg-exfrun-med-yxa-i-hamndattack/

Swipes ex-wife with ax in revenge attack

Abdi Houssein, 51, lay in   wait in a stairwell, armed with an ax.

When his ex-wife passed, he went to a senseless attack and hit her up to 20 times.

Now the court of appeal reduces the sentence to 16 years in prison, after the court has already sentenced 18 years.

In early 2018, Uppsalabon Abdi Houssein was arrested and charged, suspected of threatening the life of his ex-wife on several occasions. During the investigation, the woman said  that she had been given away in marriage to Houssein when they both lived in Ethiopia but that they had been separated in Sweden for five years.

In February, the case was terminated by the 51-year-old being sentenced to fines for unlawful threats - and freed.

Then he was ordered to have no contact with his ex-wife  and a proceeding that would give her sole custody of the children was in progress. He also saw it as a threat that she could disappear into a sheltered accommodation.

Planned revenge while in  detention

But in the meantime he had planned his revenge.

He was released on February 2th. On February 5, he bought an ax at the Bauhaus. The day after - February 6th - he went to work.

Surveillance pictures show how Abdi Houssein is on the ground floor in a stairwell in the Gottsunda district of Uppsala, armed with a red ax. There he waits for half an hour before he sees his ex-wife - who is heading to pick up the children at the kindergarten -  walking by.

The pictures show how he walks out of the stairwell, with the ax behind his back, and rushes towards the woman.

In front of several witnesses, he begins to chop wildly at the woman. When she  falls to the ground injured, he continues to chop, according to testimony he hit her between ten and 20 times with the ax.

The witness: "You must stop!"

"I began to bark at him and told him to" stop your damn ... you must  stop! ". I said this three, four times to him. In the end he stopped and then he lifted his ax against me and shouted "Come on, come on!" Then he backed off a few meters. The woman was lifeless in the snow, the witness, Daniel El Mallah, 63, previously said.

After the attack, Abdi Houssein was still armed with the ax, which he eventually threw in a pile of leaves along the escape route.

The woman was severely injured in the attack, but survived.

- She has suffered from several very serious and life-threatening injuries. The most serious injuries are in her face and the skull, unfortunately she has lost an eye, the woman's lawyer Henrik Jansson has said earlier.

The court of appeal decreases the penalty

Abdi Houssein, in particular, acknowledged gross abuse, but denied that he tried to murder the woman. When the District Court announced its verdict in May, they followed the  prosecutor's  request to sentence him to 18 years in prison for attempted murder.
The judgment was appealed to the court of appeal - which now chooses to lower the sentence.

On Friday, Svea Hovrätt announced a new verdict, where Abdi Houssein is sentenced to 16 years in prison for the assassination attempt.

The judgment states:

"The High Court further agrees with the District Court that it was only temporary circumstances and a highly qualified care effort that resulted in the crime not being completed, so the scope for a reduction of the penalty value is limited. However, taking into account this, the court of appeal considers that the penalty value is somewhat lower than that District Court found and corresponds to prison for sixteen years instead of eighteen. "

- We note that the court of appeal has listened to our arguments that the punishment in the district court was too long. My client says, however, that he never intended to kill the plaintiff and that the sentence should have been reduced further, "said Houssein Defense Attorney Jöns Gerhardsson.