Sweden: 4-year-old dies – acquitted men get compensation after 24 years

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Swedish Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson (2015): Don't weigh suffering with money

Photo: Jessica Gow/ dpa

The men have been blamed for the death of a four-year-old boy for years.

Wrongly.

Now, 24 years after the boy's death, the brothers, who were children themselves at the time, are receiving compensation of one million crowns each - the equivalent of around 92,000 euros - from the state, as the Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" reports.

This sum will be approved by the government because the two men were wrongly identified as guilty, said the Swedish Ministry of Justice.

Several media reported that the police suspected the boys at the time and interrogated them for a long time, sometimes without their parents.

The boys confessed to the crime at the time and were then placed in state care, reports The Independent.

Children as perpetrators?

Attorney General Morgan Johansson said the suffering the brothers had endured over the years cannot be measured in money.

There is actually no compensation that can compensate for this.

Four-year-old Kevin was found dead in August 1998 in Arvika, around 250 kilometers north of Gothenburg.

The two brothers, who were only five and seven at the time, were soon identified as having killed the boy.

It was not until 2018 that the investigators saw the allegations as invalid.

Cause of death still unclear

The men then each demanded ten million crowns (around 920,000 euros) in damages.

However, this was initially refused on the grounds that the case was too long ago.

In July 2021, the two men appealed again to the government to pay them compensation for the suffering they had suffered.

How Kevin died is still unclear to this day.

According to investigators, it could also have been an accident.

bbr/kha/dpa