A murder suspect on the lam for 15 months tried to turn himself into a Malmö, Sweden police station on Monday night — only to be told that it was after 6 PM and the officers had shut down for the night. According to the report in the English language version of The Local , police commander Anders Oxelbrand shrugged off the incident. “Things are a bit messy right now,” he said, noting that the station in question is undergoing renovations.
Maybe, but Carol Kuruvilla of The New York Daily News reports that suspect Saleh Hadri was more than a little irritated that he’d traveled all the way from Egypt to Sweden to defend himself against the charge of killing a 31-year-old member of The Wolfpack Brotherhood — only to be told that he should try a different police station.
“Closed? I’m suspected of murder and a wanted man — you guys really want to get a hold of me,” Saleh sputtered. It wasn’t enough to convince the officers to open the door, and he ultimately had to drive 20 minutes to a different station. Now properly arrested, he faces his first hearing on Thursday.
Stieg Larsson fans might be bemused by the casual attitude of Swedish police toward a man wanted for a gangland slaying. The late Swedish writer, best known for the best-selling Millennium thriller series that kicked off with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, worked tirelessly to raise the awareness of neo-Nazi and gangland violence in normally peaceful Sweden. But apparently some officer still haven’t got the memo.
The average murder suspect isn’t going to go from police station to police station in search of an officer willing to arrest him. In this case, the suspect was even forced to buy his own plane ticket from Egypt. Being asked to hunt for a police station that didn’t roll up the sidewalks promptly at 6 just added insult to injury.
