Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.04.2013, Síða 6

An End To The Neverending Nightmare?
Iceland's most controversial criminal case once again revisited
by Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson
“The nation has been unburdened of a nightmare,” Ólafur Jóhannesson, then Minister of Justice, proudly stated in
parliament on February 3, 1977, at the end of a three-year investigation into the disappearance of two men. At a press
conference in the Criminal Court of Reykjavík the day before, investigators announced that the mystery had been solved.
German police officer Karl Schütz, who had been hired to solve the case1, outlined the official version of events, printed
word by word in the daily newspaper Morgunblaðið the following day. Nothing stood in the way of handing out prison
sentences—or so it seemed.
Iceland | Justice
It was, however, not a nightmare for the nation, but for six people around
20-years-old, who at this point had been detained in the now demolished
Síðumúli Prison for more than a year where they confessed to having mur-
dered the two men. What followed was a Kafkaesque court case wherein no
corpses, no evidence and no realistic motives for the alleged murders mate-
rialised.
Long before the main court procedures, four of the defendants had repeat-
edly withdrawn their confessions, which they said were the result of physi-
cal and mental torture. However, these statements, most of which were never
properly confirmed by the investigators, were not taken into account by the
Criminal Court judges who convicted all six people in December 1977. Two
of them received life sentences and the other four were given sentences rang-
ing from 15 months to 16 years in prison. Three years later, Iceland's Supreme
Court confirmed the convictions, but reduced the sentences.
Once released from prison, one of the convicted, Sævar Marinó Ciesielski,
started a life-long struggle to restore his and his co-defendants dignity. The
results were mixed: while public opinion certainly shifted in favour of Sævar's
fight, his attempts to have the case retried by the Supreme Court were unsuc-
cessful. As time passed, he turned to life on the streets until he was finally
“outlawed from Iceland,” as he said to an Icelandic passer-by in Copenhagen
where he spent his last days before passing away in July 2011.
Following Sævar's demise and a public outcry, Minister of the Interior
Ögmundur Jónasson commissioned a task force in 2011 to examine the case
and how it was executed. Their conclusions were published at the end of last
month bringing a possible end to one of Iceland's most controversial court
cases.
THE CASE OF GUÐMUNDUR
AND GEIRFINNUR
In late January 1974, 18-year-old Guðmundur Einarsson disappeared after
having gone to a dance in Hafnarfjörður. Almost ten months later, on the
eve of November 19, 32-year-old Geirfinnur Einarsson left his home in Ke-
flavík and was never seen again. Despite extensive investigations, neither of
their bodies nor any possible motives for murders were found.
A year after Geirfinnur's disappearance, Sævar and Erla Bolladóttir
were arrested for embezzlement, a case completely unrelated to the two dis-
appearances, but the police quickly turned the focus to Guðmundur's disap-
pearance. After a week of interrogations, Erla was released and Kristján
Viðar Viðarsson, Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson and Albert Klahn Skaftason were
arrested and detained. A week later, Morgunblaðið ran a front-page story
about the custody of four men suspected of murdering Guðmundur. Soon,
the police also linked them to the alleged murder of Geirfinnur, once again
arresting Erla and Guðjón Skarphéðinsson.
In the beginning, the defendants denied having anything to do with the
disappearances, but as interrogations continued, they made various confes-
sions and withdrawals with different alleged crime scenes and motives.
Halfway through the investigation, the above-mentioned Schütz was hired
to take over the case. He brought new interrogation methods and sent regu-
lar updates to the media, which they printed without question. Charges were
eventually issued, court hearings started and sentences were delivered.
UNRELIABLE TESTIMONIES
RESULTING FROM DURESS AND PREJUDICE
When Ögmundur Jónasson commissioned the task force in late 2011, the
torturous treatment of the defendants had become widely known so noth-
ing really surprising resulted from their work. It included a review of the
case, its official, unofficial and recently discovered documents, as well as
interviews with the living convicts. Only a psychological assessment of the
convicts' statements, conducted by judicial psychologist Gísli Guðjónsson—
one of the world's leading authorities on false confessions—brought more
shameful facts to light.
The assessment's most outright conclusion is that the defendants' testi-
monies during interrogations and before the court were unreliable or false
and should never have been considered grounds for convictions. This is
due in part to the unprecedented number of interrogations—close to 200 in
some of the defendants' cases—which outnumbered the actual debriefings
where the confessions are said to have taken place. During these interroga-
tions, the defendants heard new versions of the alleged crime scenes—com-
ing from either the investigators or other defendants—to which they were
supposed to confess.
The report’s authors highlighted the unusual length of the defendant's
detention and isolation. At a March 25 press conference in which the task
force announced its conclusions, Gísli stated that he knew of no parallel to
this apart from the US-run isolation and torture camp at Guantanamo Bay.
They also confirmed the mental and physical duress experienced by the
defendants, to which the defendants themselves, former prison guards and
then prison chaplain, reverend Jón Bjarman, have already testified. To name
just one example, Erla was sexually molested by a policeman and a prison
guard while in custody.
During the investigation, “the focus seems to have been on harmonis-
ing [the defendants'] accounts of something they probably knew nothing
about,” the report states. The investigators and judges viewed the defendants
through ‘tunnel-vision,’ putting all the weight on forcing confessions. By
turning a blind eye to anything in favour of the defendants' case, the investi-
gators violated their role of bringing to light all evidence that could lead to
either a conviction or an acquittal. A key factor here seems to have been the
defendants' marginal social status and petty-criminal background, which
was enough for the establishment to view them as murderers.
Believing that “justice would prevail” in court, as Tryggvi's prison diary
suggests, it seems they hoped confessions would release them from custody.
Not long into their detention, however, they came to believe that nothing
they said really counted, except for their confessions. This applied to their
repeated confession withdrawals, which were systemically dismissed by the
investigators and judges as attempts to muddle the investigation. Addition-
ally, their right to assistance from a lawyer was limited, and some of their
lawyers seemed to view them as guilty.
All of the above and more led them to confess, and, in some cases, be-
lieve that they were guilty which is in line with the results of Gísli's decades-
long studies into the causes and nature of false confessions. It also shows
how determined the investigators were to prove them guilty. In fact, due to
the structure of Iceland’s legal system at the time, they were partly the same
people that later convicted them in court.
THE DIRTIEST MARK ON
ICELAND'S LEGAL SYSTEM
So what does this new report mean for the future of the case? The task
force suggests three possibilities: First, the State Prosecutor could decide to
reopen the case. Second, the convicted could request a retrial. Third, Parlia-
ment could propose a bill requesting a complete retrial. For now, it's still
unclear which one of these will be chosen.
Sævar's son, law student Hafþór Sævarsson, who calls the case “the
dirtiest mark on Iceland's legal system during the republic,” believes the
third option to be the most convenient. As current law doesn't allow for the
retrial of cases where the defendant is deceased, Hafþór sees this as the only
viable way to get the case retried for his father and Tryggvi, neither of whom
are still alive.
“My father lived to clear his name off this case, but justice didn't prevail
while he still lived,” Hafþór says. “It's a reasonable demand that those who
have passed away can have the opportunity for vindication.”
1 Before coming to Iceland, Schütz had, for instance, been in-
volved in hunting down the first generation of the urban guerrillas
of Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof).
2 The conditions in Síðumúli underwent heavy criticism in a
1994 survey by the European Committee for the Prevention of
Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. See:
www.cpt.coe.int/documents/isl/1994-08-inf-eng.pdf.
3 ‘The Case of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur’ is far too long, multi-
layered and complicated to be explained properly in a short article
like this, especially if one wants to take into account the broadest
historical perspective and all possible theories—conspiracy or not—
of the real motives behind the treatment and conviction of the defen-
dants.
4 Just as the case itself, the task force's conclusions are way too
extensive to be explained in a short article. A full reading of the
report is thus highly recommended to Icelandic readers: http://www.
innanrikisraduneyti.is/media/frettir-2013/GogG_heildarskjal-
--fyrir-vef-IRR.pdf.
5 This view was again voiced in 1997, following the Supreme
Court's decision not to rehear the case, when Ragnar Hall, acting
State Prosecutor, stated that the convicted were “no choirboys,” as if
that was enough to sentence innocent people. This (non)argument is
still occasionally seen in media outlet's comment sections.
6 One of the entries in the Síðumúli Prison journal states that
Sævar's lawyer, Jón Oddsson, called the prison, announcing that he
wanted to come and “grind Sævar.” When the Supreme Court re-
jected Sævar's request for rehearing in 1997, Örn Clausen, Albert's
lawyer, embraced the verdict when interviewed by newspaper DV.
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6The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 4 — 2013