Four teenage brothers and a 15-year-old girl have been sentenced by a Swedish court for their roles in the murder of a 26-year-old taxi driver.
The 15-year-old girl had lodged rape accusations against the man one month before his murder, as per BBC.
The girl lured the taxi driver to a secluded area under the pretext of a meeting, where he was overpowered, robbed, and hanged by her boyfriend and his brothers in March.
The President of the Uppsala District Court, Lars Holmgard, concluded in his judgment that, owing to previous allegations involving the girl, the taxi driver had been enticed to the location with the promise of sexual favours.
With the help of the four brothers, he was then overpowered, and his body went unnoticed for an additional week.
The oldest, aged 18, was given a life sentence, and two of his younger brothers were sentenced to four years each in juvenile detention.
Both minors at the time of the murder, the youngest brother and his girlfriend were each given three and a half years of juvenile detention for their complicity in the crime.
The court, relying on circumstantial evidence presented by prosecutors, convicted all five teenagers despite their denial of involvement.
Proof of a murder plot was presented by the prosecution, including messages exchanged between the teenagers.
On 20 March, four days before the victim disappeared, the girl wrote to a friend, ‘His brothers are going to meet my rapist.’
One of the brothers wrote, ‘We should do Friday [the day of the murder],’ to which another brother replied, “OK.”
After the murder, one of the brothers used the victim’s mobile phone to transfer money from his bank account.
The girl denied knowing that the brothers intended to kill the man, saying she had only thought they would beat him up.
But Holmgard ruled that the brothers had planned to murder the man at least from the time that they bought the rope found where he died.
‘The plan must have been for [the victim] to be hanged from the rope, in our opinion,’ he said.