Seven-month-pregnant woman, 20, is murdered in Sweden in suspected honour killing ‘because mother would not approve of her son dating a “white” girl from a different culture’

A seven-month-pregnant woman has allegedly been murdered by her boyfriend in a suspected honour killing in Sweden. 

Saga Forsgren Elneborg, 20, was strangled to death with a lamp cord in her flat in the Swedish city of Örebro, according to local media.

Prosecutors allege that her boyfriend, Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim, a refugee from Somalia who now has Swedish citizenship, killed his girlfriend in an ‘honour context’ in April last year.

Saga’s family said via their lawyer that it had been a ‘long and painful wait’ until Ibrahim was charged for Saga’s murder a week ago.

Police have released pictures of the suspected murder weapon and the crime scene in her bedroom, where Saga’s body was found next to her bed, reportedly buried under a marble table top.

The 22-year-old father of Saga’s unborn son reportedly concealed their two-year relationship from his family as his mother would not accept that he ‘meets white girls’, according to an indictment filed last week.

The prosecutor said he was raised with the belief that dating a ‘white’ woman is ‘not okay’ and that he ‘must date a woman of the same culture’, otherwise he would be shunned – but his family reportedly never knew about Saga.

Text messages between Saga and Ibrahim reveal that he had planned to tell his relatives about their relationship and baby on April 28, 2023 – the night of Saga’s murder.

He expressed feeling nervous about telling them and wrote: ‘Feels like I can almost feel my heartbeat all the way down to my stomach.’

Saga tried to reassure him and promised that ‘it will be fine’. In his last text to his girlfriend, Ibrahim claimed he told one person. Saga’s follow-up messages, asking him how it was going and for him to ‘talk to me’, remained unanswered.

State prosecutor Elisabeth Anderson alleges that Ibrahim then went to Saga’s flat, where he ‘violently’ strangled her to death with the cable of her bedside lamp, according to local outlet Aftonbladet.

Their baby boy, who weighed 1.7kg at the time and measured just 1.5ft from head to toe, also died inside Saga’s womb. 

There is no evidence to suggest that Ibrahim’s family was either involved in Saga’s murder or that they asked for her to be killed, according to local media.

Further text messages between the Saga and her alleged killer revealed that Ibrahim tried to convince his girlfriend to have an abortion shortly after she got pregnant. 

‘I know we can make it, but I won’t be able to keep my family. If it had been possible, there would have been no problem with keeping the child,’ he told her.

But Saga was excited about becoming a mother, telling him that she would have the baby, even without her boyfriend’s support, according to Anderson.

Despite her refusal to have the abortion he asked for, Ibrahim continued the relationship and planned for a future with Saga.

Anderson alleges that Ibrahim did not believe that his family would live ‘honourably’ if he had the baby with his girlfriend, but kept this from his girlfriend to not make her feel guilty and to not ‘make her take the baby away’.

The prosecutor also claims that Ibrahim’s DNA was found under Saga’s fingernails. 

A picture of the crime scene in Saga’s bedroom shows a crib right next to her bed, ready for the arrival of her baby son.

‘It has been and still is a difficult time for all [of] Saga’s relative,’ said Elisabeth Massi Fritz, who represents Saga’s family.

‘The murder of Saga is a cruel and ruthless murder with an honor motive. There are many aggravating circumstances in the deed which we will highlight during the trial,’ Massi Fritz told Aftonbladet. 

Ibrahim is due to go on trial for the murder on April 10, nearly a year after his girlfriend Saga was killed. 

He denies any wrongdoing and told police in an interrogation that he loved Saga and was still in disbelief over her death: ‘I have been in denial for nine months now.’