Cover-up claims over music festival sex assaults in Sweden
Police had not mentioned the August incidents at the We are Sthlm festival until newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported on them this weekend following a string of sexual assaults and robberies on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany.
Stockholm police spokesman Varg Gyllander confirmed there was “a large number” of sexual assaults during the five-day festival and that scores of suspects were detained.
He said police should have reported on the incidents at the time “given the nature of the crime”.
He denied suggestions in the newspaper report that police kept quiet because the suspects were foreigners.
“We probably should have communicated this,” Mr Gyllander said.
“But we wouldn’t have discussed ethnicity at all.”
Mr Gyllander could not confirm the ethnicity of the alleged attackers in Stockholm but said “this involves young men who are not from Sweden”.
Roger Ticoalu, who heads the city government’s events department, said about 20 teenage girls filed complaints of sexual assault and that about 200 suspects were detained and ejected from the festival for sexual assault and other offences.
