Sweden’s prime minister has condemned his country’s own version of the Cologne mass sexual assault allegations and alleged police cover-up, calling claims of similar events at a youth festival in Stockholm “a double betrayal” of women and a “big democratic problem”.
Swedish police promised an urgent investigation into the claims first reported by liberal newspaper Dagens Nyheter that a gang of youths — reportedly mostly from Afghanistan — groped and molested girls as young as 11 or 12 at the We Are Sthlm festival in both 2014 and 2015.
“We shall not close our eyes and look away. We need to deal with such a serious problem,” Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s centre-left prime minister, said on Monday.