An extensive lawsuit was filed in Vänersborg District Court in March. A Dalslander in his 40s was charged with, among other things, two gun crimes, drug crimes and several cases of illegal threats.

But in the case of three of the illegal threats, the prosecutor was forced to back down even before the trial began this summer. It had been more than two years since these alleged crimes took place, and they were thus statute-barred.

Death threats

The Ombudsman has decided to review the case. Why did it take so long to deal with these crimes? The complainant is a person who claims to have received death threats by telephone from the man. The other statute-barred crimes were directed at a health center in Mellerud, where the man went into custody in 2017. However, he was sentenced to probation for the damage he then caused and for later text message threats.

The prosecutor who brought the indictment worked temporarily in Uddevalla and had not handled the case before. She was assigned the case by the boss, who explained that it was an old investigation that needed to be completed.

- So I have nothing to do with the case taking a long time. It's just to apologize, but it was out of my control, the woman told SVT Nyheter Väst, and continues:

- On the other hand, I prosecuted and there I did wrong. I prosecuted for things that have already expired. I can only regret that too.

"Very sad"

It was not this prosecutor who discovered the error, but a colleague of hers who was going to go to trial.

- Then we had to withdraw those charges and it is very sad, not least for the plaintiffs who expected that it would be something of it, the prosecutor says.

She does not know why the processing took so long, but says that there may be several reasons for both prosecutors and the police.

One of the plaintiffs says that he became angry when he heard that the crime had become too old to be taken up in the trial.

- It is clear that you get angry when it was so badly handled. And I then think about how many others happen to the same thing, that crimes only run into the sand because they are poorly handled, the man tells SVT Nyheter Väst.