Teen migrant allegedly kills asylum worker
Alexandra Mezher was helping minor migrants adapt to new lives in Sweden
Alexandra Mezher was “an angel” — young, beautiful and, above all, kind.
She was also the face of a new and idyllic Sweden. The 22-year-old’s family hailed from Lebanon. A couple of months ago, Mezher began working at an asylum centre in the city of Molndal, helping unaccompanied minor migrants adapt to life in their adopted home.
Now her alleged murder at the hands of one of those young migrants threatens to shatter that idyllic image of the Scandinavian country, already under strain as it reacts to an influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees.
“It is so terrible. She was a person who wanted to do good,” Mezher’s cousin told Swedish newspaper Expressen. “And then he murdered her when she was doing her job.
“It is the Swedish politicians’ f ault that she is dead,” the cousin added.
Mezher was allegedly stabbed to death on Monday by a 15-year-old migrant at a refugee centre in Molndal, a city of about 40,000 people on the southwestern coast near Gothenburg, according to Expressen.
“It was messy, of course, a crime scene with blood,” police spokesperson Thomas Fuxborg told Swedish news agency TT. He refused to identify Mezher’s teenage attacker, his nationality or his motive, but Fuxborg did say other asylum seekers tried to come to Mezher’s aid.
“The perpetrator had been overpowered by other residents” when arrested, Fuxborg said, adding that everyone at the centre was “depressed and upset” about the brutal stabbing.
Staffan Alexandersson, a social worker and spokesperson for Living Nordic AB, the company that runs the centre for unaccompanied migrant youth ages 14 to 17, described the incident as a “horrible and tragic event.”
“We regret what happened,” he told TT, “and we’re working right now in the crisis team to deal with both staff and children.”
The murder comes at a crucial time for Sweden. The country of 9.8 million initially took an accommodating stance toward the millions of migrants fleeing Syria and other hot spots, accepting more than 160,000 asylum-seekers in 2015, including around 35,000 unaccompanied minors.
Per capita, the Swedes welcomed more refugees than any other country except Germany.
But as the number of migrants mounted, so, too, did anger toward them. And by late last year, Sweden had reversed its open doors policy and introduced border controls and identification checks to stem the flow of immigrants.
The symbolism of Mezher’s mur- der — a Swede from a Middle Eastern f amily allegedly brutally stabbed by a recently arrived migrant — was not lost on the country’s politicians.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven visited the asylum centre just hours after the death, calling it a “terrible crime” and admitting that it tapped into escalating fears. “I believe that there are quite many people in Sweden who feel a lot of concern that there can be more cases of this kind, when Sweden receives so many children and youth, who come alone (to seek asylum),” he said, according to Radio Sweden.
Lofven also promised more resources for police, saying that security forces were taxed by the recent influx of immigrants.
The number of threats or violent incidents at asylum shelters more than doubled last year, from 148 incidents in 2014 to 322 in 2015, according to The Local, which cited statistics from the Swedish Migration Agency.
Those same f acilities have become targets for immigration opponents, with at least two dozen centres damaged by arson last year, the newspaper reported.