Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2011, Blaðsíða 12

Kraum of the crop
A shop dedicated to the best of icelandic design.
OPENING HOURS
Week days 9:00 - 20:00
Saturday 10:00 - 17:00
Sunday 12:00 - 17:00
Kraum is in the oldest house
in Reykjavík. Aðalstræti 10,
p. 517 7797, kraum.is
12
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11 — 2011 He was Iceland’s most famous criminal, but he always professed his innocence and many believe it.
Sævar Ciesielski died in
Copenhagen on July 13,
of accidental causes.
He was nothing less than
Iceland’s most famous felon. Along
with a group of his friends, he was
convicted of two murders in 1980,
after having been held in custody
for a long time. This is the most writ-
ten and talked about criminal case
in Icelandic history, Guðmundar og
Geirfinnsmálið (“The case of Guð-
mundur and Geirfinnur”—after the
two alleged victims, whose bodies
have never been recovered).
After he was released from jail in 1984,
Sævar fought for the case to be re-
opened. He always professed his in-
nocence, but to no avail. In the last
years, Sævar started living the life of a
homeless man, staying mostly in Co-
penhagen. Many think that Sævar and
his friends were the victims of a great
travesty of justice.
TWO MYSTERIOUS DISAPEAR-
ANCES
Sævar was sentenced for the murders
of Geirfinnur Einarsson and Guðmun-
dur Kristjánsson. Both men disappeared
without a trace. Guðmundur was never
seen again after a night on the town, but
the case of Geirfinnur Einarsson was
more complicated. Geirfinnur, a resident
of the town of Keflavík, came home one
night, received a phone call and went
out—never to be seen again.
This was November 19, 1974. The
case dragged on for years, rousing all
sorts of rumours, some of which made
it into to the press. At one stage, a prime
minister of Iceland even made a fiery
speech in Alþingi, denying the connec-
tions of his party to the affair. This link
was through a nightspot called Klúbbu-
rinn, whose owner was a party sponsor.
In one of the strangest turns of the case,
the owner and three others were arrest-
ed and held in custody for more than a
hundred days. The theory was that they
had been involved in smuggling alcohol
with Geirfinnur Einarsson. This was to-
tally unfounded.
ENTER A GERMAN POLICEMAN
The Icelandic police was at its wits end.
A medium was even brought in to find
the body of Geirfinnur. Finally, the Ice-
landic government recruited a German
policeman to wrap up the case. His
name was Karl Schütz. Security matters
were his speciality, rather than criminal
investigations. He didn’t turn up with
new evidence; rather, he rearranged
matters so that the solution of the case
he presented on February 2, 1977 looked
plausible. A nightmare has been lifted
from the nation—were the headlines of
the newspapers.
Finally Sævar Ciesielski and Kristján
Viðar Viðarsson were convicted for both
murders while a group of their friends
and acquaintances also received sen-
tences for being accessories. Originally
Sævar was given a life sentence, but the
High Court changed the sentence to 17
years.
NO EVIDENCE, ONLY CONFESSIONS
This should have been the end of that,
after years of continuous press cover-
age. But it was not. Firstly, there were
no bodies—neither Geirfinnur nor Guð-
mundur were ever found (or proven
to be deceased). There are no murder
weapons. And there was no evidence.
For example, no one had seen Sævar or
any of his friends in Keflavík on the night
of Geirfinnur's disappearance. Nobody
knows if they were there. Guðmundur
Kristjánsson might have been killed
in a drunken brawl, but in the case of
Geirfinnur there was a complete lack of
motive.
The cases were “solved” solely by
force of confession. It has since been a
source of debate as to how these con-
fessions were obtained. The prisoners
suffered long periods of isolation, in
Sævar’s case almost two years. A former
prison guard later revealed how these
methods broke the prisoners and drove
them mad. Sævar was deprived of sleep,
he was not allowed to have reading ma-
terial, and he might even have been sub-
jected to some forms of torture, such as
putting his head under water. So nobody
can really know if these confessions
hold true or not. The prison guard who
finally talked received threats from his
fellow guards and policemen.
SÆVAR’S STRUGGLE
When Sævar got out of prison he claimed
he was innocent. Most of the others
who were sentenced with him disap-
peared into society. They are all alive—
they were very young people at the time
of the proceedings—except Sævar and
a gentle, well liked man called Tryggvi
Rúnar Leifsson, who died two years ago
from cancer. Tryggvi was sentenced for
the murder of Guðmundur Kristjáns-
son—on his deathbed he is said to have
protested his innocence. But Sævar was
too famous. He was Iceland’s most no-
torious criminal. Everybody knew him.
In a way he did rather well. He was
raised partly in a now infamous institu-
tion called Breiðavík, where young boys
were almost systematically destroyed,
but he managed to found a family for a
while and father children. Nobody really
knew whether he was guilty of not, and
he struggled on.
In 1997, Sævar had gotten so far
that the High Court actually deliberated
whether to reopen the case. It decided
not to—which was a bitter disappoint-
ment. The court claimed that there
was no new evidence, but surely there
was no evidence in the first place! The
special prosecutor charged with han-
dling the case at this time was quoted
as saying that, whatever the case, these
people were no choirboys.
A MULTIPLE MISCARRIAGE OF JUS-
TICE
After the verdict of the High Court, then-
Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson made a
famous speech in the Alþingi. He talked
about a miscarriage of justice—this is
maybe as close as Sævar ever got to
having his name restored. Davíð said
that he had studied the case thoroughly
and that grave mistakes had been made
at every level. He said he was disap-
pointed by the High Court’s decision,
and that it would have been good for
the judicial system to review the case—
"there was not just one miscarriage of
justice, but many, and it is very hard to
live with this."
After this Sævar gradually lost his
footing in life. He started drinking heav-
ily and hanging out with men of the
street. Finally he became one himself,
a homeless drunkard. He was always
talkative, lucid, full of ideas—and not
violent at all. Sævar never received a
real education, but he had a lively intel-
ligence. In the end he left Iceland, living
in Copenhagen and Christiania, the old
hippy colony in the centre of the city.
There are pictures of him, grimy from
dirt, with a broken nose and an old hat—
some say he looks like Jón Hreggviðs-
son, the fugitive from Halldór Laxness'
novel ‘Iceland’s Bell’ who was convicted
for a crime no one knew whether he had
committed or not, and went back and
forth from Iceland to Denmark to save
his head.
A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
Ultimately, Sævar had no country. It is
reported that in the end he was not reg-
istered as an Icelandic citizen. A group
of Icelanders met him in Christiania
a few days before he died. Sævar was
staying in a tree house. He introduced
himself, but of course they instantly
recognised him despite the dirt and
the years of hard living. "I was made an
outlaw from Iceland," Sævar told them.
“We know, Sævar, we know,” was the in-
terlocutor’s feeble answer. "But anyway,
Iceland has sunk," Sævar added.
A few days later he died of head inju-
ries. He was 56. His funeral will be held in
the Cathedral of Reykjavík on August 2.
And now that he is dead, there are again
demands that his case be reopened or
that an investigative committee look into
the whole affair. But it is not really likely
that this will happen. Formally, it is only
the High Court that can decide to re-
view the case. As before there is no new
evidence—and probably there never will
be. The judicial system does not like to
admit mistakes. Thus, we will possibly
never know the truth of the matter. But it
has to be said that Sævar Ciesielski was,
in his quest for what he believed was
justice, quite a remarkable figure in his
own way.
THE TRAGIC STORY OF SÆVAR CIESIELSKI
“The Icelandic police was at its wits end. A medium was
even brought in to find the body of Geirfinnur. Finally, the
Icelandic government recruited a German policeman to
wrap up the case.”
His | Story
Words
Egill Helgason
Photo
Morgunblaðið, February 3, 1977
Daily newspaper Morgunblaðið declares case closed: Three men confess to the murder of Geirfinnur.