The 49-year-old woman is charged with war crimes and violations of international law.
According to the indictment, she traveled to Syria in 2013 and has contributed to a boy under the age of 15 being used as a child soldier for the terrorist group IS.
He must then have lost his life.
The woman returned to Sweden in 2020 and was arrested in September last year.
Lacked influence
The woman's defense lawyer says that she thinks it's nice that the district court now has the opportunity to try the accusations against her.
The core question in the case is whether she participated in recruiting the boy as a child soldier or not.
The woman herself says she is innocent.
- The main argument is that she has lacked influence in these issues.
There are other people who have participated in a possible recruitment and it has, so to speak, been outside her decision-making competence, says Mikael Westerlund and continues:
- She has not had the opportunity to exercise influence over this boy simply.
Prosecutor: There is sufficient evidence
The prosecution, on the other hand, believes that there is sufficient evidence for a conviction.
According to prosecutor Reena Devgun, the investigation shows that during the time he lived at home, the son was both educated and trained to take part in hostilities and equipped with military weapons and used in combat.
He is also said to have been used for propaganda purposes and for other missions that formed part of the warfare.
- How he has been used and what her role looked like, we will explain in more detail in court, but we claim that she is responsible, she says to SVT News.
Not tried before
The issue of Swedish child soldiers has never before been tried in a Swedish court.
- There is no practice available regarding the actual construction of the crime as penalty values and so on and it places special demands on both the prosecutor side, the defense side and finally also the court, says defense lawyer Mikael Westerlund.
The trial is set to begin on Monday next week.