Swedish police accused of covering up 'widespread sexual assaults against teenage girls at a music festival last summer'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/swedish-police-to-investigate-alleged-cover-up-of-sexual-assaults/2016/01/11/01313dda-b8b6-11e5-85cd-5ad59bc19432_video.html

AP reports:

Swedish police faced allegations of a cover-up Monday for failing to inform the public of widespread sexual assaults [apparently consisting of groping] against teenage girls at a music festival last summer.

Police hadn't 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 to The Associated Press on Monday there was "a large number" of sexual assaults during the five-day festival [by "young men who are not from Sweden"] 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….

Roger Ticoalu, who heads the city government's events department, told the AP that a "large part" of those detained were from Afghanistan, many carrying temporary ID-cards issued to asylum-seekers.

He 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 offenses. It wasn't immediately clear whether any of them were arrested and charged…

"We've always had individual cases" of sexual assault, he said. "But here we have a larger group doing it almost in an organized way. It's a completely new level of obscenity."

"You have a large group of boys surrounding the girls," he said. "They pretend to dance. They come closer and closer. Then they start touching their breasts and genitals. In some cases in combination with theft." …

Dagens Nyheter cited police officials saying Swedish police are reluctant to speak publicly about crimes linked to migrants for fear of playing into the hands of the far-right Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party whose support has surged to about 20 percent in opinion polls.

Nyheter Idag also alleges that the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter refused to write about the story when it happened, though it had gotten accounts of the story, because it viewed it as being a "fabrication[]" by the Sweden Democrats. The "We are Sthlm" event was, according to Nyheter Idag, headlined by "nationally acclaimed and outspoken feminist artist Zara Larsson."

Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.