Dagbladet reveals: – Oslo prison resettlement stopped

The prison director, Nils Leyell Finstad, at the Oslo prison, confirms that there was a fight between two inmates in the visiting room on November 17.

– We are considering whether to report the incident. We review this in the usual way and have reports, interrogations and video recordings, he says.

Finstad explains that both inmates were offered health department supervision in accordance with normal routine, but that this was rejected.

It was the leader of Young Bloods (29) and another gang member (26) who barked together. The two are said to be equally guilty in the fight, which was stopped by prison staff.

– It becomes a potentially deadly combination.

The Young Bloods leader was in court the day after the fight and had no visible signs of violence. Dagbladet knows there was an exchange of insults at the roof of the basket.

The fight took place when the Young Bloods frontman ended a meeting with his two lawyers, Øyvind Bratlien and Fisnik Baki. The two of them witnessed the incident.

Internal fight

The Young Bloods leader was transferred to Oslo prison on November 13 in connection with the processing of his appeal at the Borgarting Court of Appeal. He was sentenced in district court to seven years in prison for complicity in attempted murder and kidnapping.

Until the trial, he was detained in Gjøvik Prison.

The other inmate, the 26-year-old, is serving a sentence for complicity in the attempted murder of another member of Young Bloods in 2017, who was shot in the neck and today is paralyzed from the chest down.

The incident was described as an internal arrangement at Young Bloods. According to the police, in 2016 the gang split into what was called the Kurdish faction and the Albanian faction.

According to police, the two who now barked together in prison belong to their own part of the Holmlia gang.

“Run away from the place while laughing”

The defender responds

Dagbladet is aware that the news of the fight has reached the south of Oslo. Many are now concerned whether this could lead to upset and potentially revenge.

The two lawyers who witnessed the fight react to the handling of the case by the prison. According to lawyers Bratlien and Baki, it took between one and two minutes before the prison officers appeared.

– The prison had no notes on who my client was and what environment he belongs to or with whom he could be in conflict, says Øyvind Bratlien, who is very critical of how the Oslo prison handled security.

He thinks it shocking that an inmate with a known conflict with his client is allowed to be left alone in the visiting area when the prison knows who else is present.

– No one in the Oslo prison has contacted afterwards to explain or ask for forgiveness. This was not a situation we wanted to be in.

The Oslo terror gang: kidnapping and attempted murder

Six points of criticism

In the visitor area, there are several things that can potentially be used as weapons, he notes. Bratlien highlights six points to which he responds:

• The prison allowed two inmates, who were not to be present at the same time, to be in the visiting area at the same time.
• There were no prison guards present.
• The lawyers were present without being warned or asked to wait inside the visiting room.
• The prison did not have important information about who his client was, even though he is well known for criminal care and has been in Oslo prison before.
• Prison staff were rude and arrogant after the incident, and poorly oriented to security in post-incident visits.
• The response was too slow when lawyers tried to sound the alarm.

Lawyers believe that it is better for gangs to stay together in jail than to be with people with whom they are in conflict.

– Enemies

The 26-year-old’s defender, Stian Mæland, confirms that he is familiar with the case, but says he does not know the details.

He also reacts to the fact that the prison has failed to keep the two apart, noting that his client may be the one who has spent the longest time in the Oslo prison, which is a prison with a lot of custody and therefore frequent replacements. .

According to the lawyer, an attempt was made earlier to transfer him to another prison, but then he also encountered another gang member. This will therefore be the second time that the prison service cannot keep the 26-year-old apart from other gang members.

– It’s a shame they can’t separate them. Especially when they use it as an argument not to transfer my client to Ullersmo prison, where his friends are.

Shotgun shooting: – I had nightmares for a long time.

The 26-year-old is sitting in something called an “information flow,” which means that the prison service has access to a lot of information on its network.

– This is a closed world. They do not escape. It’s like putting two fighting cocks in the arena to say “don’t fight.” It does not work. It is naive and similar to cardamom. The prison must take responsibility for ensuring that enemies do not meet.

I’m sorry

The prison director cannot go into details about individual incidents. He explains that the prison has routines for risk assessment of which prisoners should not be together, but that in this case, for various reasons, it took some time before they could implement all the relevant information for this risk assessment.

– Recently, an inmate was transferred to Oslo Prison as a “transport prisoner”. There was an error in the practice of our routines, which meant that relevant information was not handled in relation to the visit. I’m sorry.

The man the police think leads Young Bloods

He says there are always two officers present in the visiting department. At the relevant time, one of them stays for a short period outside the visiting room to visit an inmate after a visit using a body scanner.

– Both lawyers and interns are present in the visiting department, in different groups / visiting hours. Security is guaranteed by officers who work in the visiting department and surveillance cameras in the common areas with a direct link to the operations center.

The visitor rooms are simply furnished with Plexiglas, kettle, children’s toys, stuffed animals and books, and are frequently visited.

– In my opinion, this is justifiable and security is well taken care of, says the director of the prison.

Gang leader in court – It was a hunt

Review routines

Finstad is surprised that the lawyer thinks he can know what information the prison has. He also says it took 29 seconds, no more than a minute, for several officers to be on the scene to stop the fight.

– An important part of our social responsibility is that custody and punishment must be carried out safely. We have routines that take care of this, among other things to ensure that prisoners who should not or should not have contact with each other also do not.

Alarms: – Ends in chaos

– The current fight makes us do a review of our routines. In some cases, it is difficult to find a suitable prison place for inmates belonging to different networks. In my opinion, the criminal justice system handles this demanding challenge well. In total, there are few incidents such as fights between inmates. There hasn’t been an incident like this in the visiting department in at least ten years.

On Bratlien’s criticism that the employees were rude and arrogant afterwards, Finstad says the following:

– I am sorry that the lawyer has this experience. In my opinion, the visiting wing of the Oslo prison has a very good reputation. I am aware that my colleagues have a completely different perception of the situation when it comes to current behavior in the visiting department.