Somalian refugee is jailed for life for murdering his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend in honour killing

Wednesday, June 5, 2024 - A Somalian refugee who murdered his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend last year in an 'honour killing' has been jailed for life.

Saga Forsgren Elneborg, 20, was found strangled to death at her home in the city of Örebro in April 2023 in a case that shocked the Scandinavian country.

Prosecutors claimed that her 22-year-old boyfriend Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim decided to murder her rather than face the shame of telling his Muslim family that his girlfriend, believed to be half Thai, half Swedish and Christian, was expecting his baby.

They alleged that on the night Ibrahim was due to tell his family about Saga's pregnancy, he went to her flat in Örebro and strangled her to death by wrapping the cord of her lamp around her neck.

Ibrahim initially tried to pin Saga's death on a gangland killing, claiming criminals had burst into the apartment and killed her to take the money he had stashed there.

But the judge and jury in Örebro district court agreed with prosecutors, announcing this morning that Ibrahim will face life in prison.

It also transpired during the court proceedings that Ibrahim had frequently met other women during his relationship with Saga and had largely refused to assume any responsibilities as a would-be father.

Prosecutors set forth evidence that Ibrahim had routinely promised he would move in with Saga after finding out about her pregnancy, yet never agreed to even spend one whole night with her.

'The prosecutor has shown through robust evidence that the 22-year-old murdered his pregnant girlfriend and that the fetus in the stomach died as a result,' court president Lars-Gunnar Lundh said in a statement following Ibrahim's sentencing this morning.

'The prosecutor has also shown that the murder was honour-related, which the district court considers to be an aggravating assessment of the penalty value'.

During the trial Ibrahim insisted that Saga was killed by criminals who forced their way into her apartment, purportedly to steal a bag of cash he said he'd stashed there.

But prosecutors completely refuted the claims, arguing there was no evidence of any forced entry at the property.

The alibi presented by Ibrahim was quickly proven false.

The killer reportedly claimed he was out driving with a friend at the time of Saga's murder, but prosecutors showed that he did not use his phone for 90 minutes around the incident. In the meantime, the friend in question was on a phone call with another person and refused to testify in Ibrahim's defence, according to expressen.se.

Ibrahim's lawyer Soren Abbaszadeh told Swedish broadcaster SVT that his client would appeal the sentence because he feels he has been wrongly convicted.

'My client believes that the verdict, regardless of the reasons for the verdict, is completely wrong and we have therefore immediately submitted an appeal.'

Lawyers representing Saga's family said they were 'relieved at the conviction, and that it was a life sentence', describing the verdict as 'fair'.

In case documents, Saga's mother Malisa Elneborg told investigators in a police interview that she was the one to find her daughter lying dead in her apartment in the city 100 miles west of Stockholm.

Saga's mother spoke to police in a series of interviews in 2023, the first being on April 29 - the day after Saga is believed to have been murdered, on April 28, 2023.

In the interviews, Ms Elneborg recounted how she met up with some of her friends on Friday, April 28 at a Deli in Örebro, with her daughter Saga also joining them.

That day, she said, Saga was nervous because she knew that Ibrahim - who Saga called Amin - planned on telling his parents that he was going to be a father.

Ms Elneborg told police that Amin had largely kept his relationship with Saga secret from his family on account of him being a devout Muslim, and Saga being Christian.

The mother said she had also only met Amin around three times, despite her daughter being seven months pregnant with his baby at the time of her death.

Saga's mother said her daughter was nervous while waiting for news, but had a good time at the deli, chatting with her friends.

She also recalled how Saga repeatedly checked her phone throughout their meeting.

She told the investigating officer that Amin planned on telling his mother when she got home later that night, as she finished work at around 10pm.

While Saga was still waiting for news, Ms Elneborg and her friends went on to another establishment in town, she told the police, but Saga decided to go home back to her apartment to wait for her boyfriend there.

The mother and daughter said their goodbyes, with Ms Elneborg telling the interviewer that she and her friends wished Saga good luck, not knowing that was the last time they would see her alive.

The next day, Saturday, April 29 - Ms Elneborg told police that she went over to her daughter's apartment to pick up some of her things.

She told police that she had been living with her daughter on and off to help her during her pregnancy, but had left for a couple of nights, Thursday and Friday (April 27 and 28) so that Amin could stay over and give them privacy.

When she arrived at the apartment on the Saturday, she was on the phone to her other daughter and Saga's older sister, Julia Elneborg.

She first rang the doorbell 'just in case Amin is running around naked in there', she told the police but received no answer.

Ms Elneborg said after not receiving an answer, she got 'irritated' and shouted through the letterbox. Again, there was no answer.

Instead, she said she used her key to enter the building, but to her surprise found that the door to the apartment was already unlocked.

'I'm just thinking 'what the hell are they doing?' Because she always locks the door. Always. Even if she only goes down to the basement, to the laundry room or down the stairs and collects the mail then she locks. Always.' Ms Elneborg told police.

The mother then started to look through the apartment, finding a knife sitting on top of a 'moving box' in the hallway, and the tap in the kitchen gushing water.

Ms Elneborg said she turned the tap off while calling 'hello, hello?' into the apartment. 

Moments later, she saw her daughter 'lying there'.

Ms. Elneborg said she found Saga's body covered with the tabletop of a square marble table, something that was pictured in photographs of the crime scene.

She also said Saga's long black hair was covering her face.

'That's when it just kind of... everything goes so fast,' she told police. 'I'm shouting at Julia on the phone. 'She's dead, she's dead. They have murdered Saga.'

'And I just panicked all over when you see your child like that,' she said, recalling how she moved the table to check if she was still alive.

'And then I sort of see that she has the cord, a lamp cord wrapped around [her] neck and the lamp is next to her on the right side.'

At this point, Ms Elneborg told police, she started running around the apartment in panic, her daughter hearing her screams and cries down the phone, before she hung up and called for the emergency services.

Prosecutors charged Amin with murder and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

In the indictment, prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson wrote: 'Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim has killed Saga Forsgren Elneborg by suffocating and strangling her using pressure on her neck with an impact on the trachea and the blood supply to the head.'

She added in a press release: 'I mean that the murder took place in an honour context because the man wanted to preserve or restore his and his family's honour by killing the woman who was carrying his child.'

In text messages to Saga, Ibrahim told her he would tell his relatives about their relationship and baby on April 28, 2023 - the night of Saga's murder.

He expressed feeling nervous about telling them and wrote: 'Feels like I can almost feel my heartbeat all the way down to my stomach.'

Saga tried to reassure him and promised that 'it will be fine'. In his last text to his girlfriend, Ibrahim claimed he told one person. Saga's follow-up messages, asking him how it was going and for him to 'talk to me', remained unanswered.

State prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson said that Ibrahim then went to Saga's flat, where he 'violently' strangled her to death with the cable of her bedside lamp, according to local outlet Aftonbladet.

Their baby boy, who weighed 1.7kg at the time and measured just 1.5ft from head to toe, also died inside Saga's womb.

There is no evidence to suggest that Ibrahim's family was either involved in Saga's murder or that they asked for her to be killed, according to local media.

Further text messages between the Saga and her alleged killer revealed that Ibrahim tried to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion shortly after she got pregnant.

'I know we can make it, but I won't be able to keep my family. If it had been possible, there would have been no problem with keeping the child,' he told her.

But Saga was excited about becoming a mother, telling him that she would have the baby, even without her boyfriend's support, according to Anderson.