"I am not surprised over the murder," said Ida, who joined the action. "I know how the police view people. We must not accept it or give in to it." Protests were also held in Jönköping, Malmö, and other towns.

On the night he was killed, Demir and a friend were stopped by two traffic police at about 11:00 p.m. Finding he did not have a driver's license, the cops followed Demir to an apartment in Råslätt, a working-class immigrant suburb. Demir, who already had two appeals for asylum turned down and was facing deportation, ran out of the apartment trying to get away from the cops. A neighbor told the newspaper Jönköping-sposten that Demir was halfway down the stairs when he was shot in the back. "Idris never threatened the police," she said.

Within hours of the killing, the Jönköping police department issued a statement saying the 56-year-old officer opened fire on a man who attacked him with a knife. This story was repeated the following day by Lennart Wennblom, a cop-appointed press spokesperson for the department. Chief Prosecutor Ulf Barck-Holst, who heads a so-called internal investigation of the killing, expressed irritation with the response, saying the Jönköping police "said too much. They didn't have to make statements in such detail. The internal investigation hadn't even started."

Lars-Gunnar Carlsson, who since December 2000 has been the legal representative of Demir and his brother, Süleyman Demir, told the media about a phone call he received from the officer in charge at the Jönköping police station. The cop told him that the cops had an "official version" that the officer had been attacked with a knife and had shot Idris Demir in self-defense. But afterwards, Carlsson told the press, the cops said "the real version was that the victim was escaping and the policeman stood five, six steps up the stairs and shot him from behind. He then said that he told this off the record and that it would stay between us."

A friend of Idris Demir told the paper it would have been out of character for Demir to attack the police, and that "they would never have fired had it not been an immigrant."

After identifying his brother at the morgue, Süleyman Demir was held for 19 hours in a police cell to await deportation, but the immigration authorities later decided to temporarily delay the proceedings.

Demir is the sixth person killed by police in Sweden since 1999, bringing the total since 1990 to 11. The Swedish government has not issued a statement about the latest cop attack, but on March 12, Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström said Stockholm is increasing its funding of the police by 1.1 billion kronas this year. "It is the biggest investment in police ever," he said. Bodström also said the government will start a "new, third police academy in southern Sweden."

Daniel Ahl is a member of the Industrial Union in Stockholm. Dag Tirsén contributed to this article.
 
 
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