[ad_1]
Jari Aarnio, a former Helsinki drug chief, has been sentenced to life in prison for murder. The Helsinki District Court considers that Aarnio’s ruling contributed to Volkan Ünsal’s death in 2003. However, the court acquitted former gang leader Keijo Vilhunen, accused of the same crime. The verdict is a shock and Aarnio will certainly be upset, says his attorney.
The verdict was handed down on Tuesday. It is outstanding.
The court considers that Aarnio knew about the assassination plans but did not prevent them, which he should have done as a policeman. He is convicted of murder in the section on crimes of genuine negligence. Legally this is unique, but more on that later in the article.
The district court draws attention to the fact that it did not tell anyone that it found out about the murder and is therefore considered to have an obligation to stop the murder.
However, Aarnio has not taken any action to stop him. According to the district court, he should consider Ünsal likely to be killed if he does not take action.
He has not warned Ünsal or told other police what he knows. Therefore, the district court considers that it is possible to see a causal connection between Aarnio’s failure and Ünsal’s death.
Sufficient evidence against Vilhunen is lacking
The accusation against Vilhunen is that he participated in the organization of the murder together with those who were previously convicted in the case. According to the district court, there is insufficient evidence for this.
According to the district court, the alternative course of events with which Vilhunen defended himself has been possible. Therefore, there is considerable suspicion of his guilt and the accusation is dismissed.
Vilhunen defended himself during the trial by trying to obtain information about the murder in advance to inform Aarnio so that the police could stop the plans. Therefore, the district court considers this to be possible.
Keijo Vilhunen in the district court. Vilhunen was sentenced in 2019 to 10 years in prison for a felony drug offense and is now in prison.
Pictured is Keijo Vilhunen at the Helsinki District Court in September 2020.
Drawing: Silja Viitala / Yle
Beaten to death in an apartment in October 2003
This is the second time that Ünsal’s murder has taken place in court. In 2005, both the district court and the court of appeal convicted Janne Raninen, Raimo Andersson and Jani Leinonen for murder and Leo Carmona for incitement to murder. All four received life sentences.
Ünsal was killed in an apartment on the North Sea in Helsinki on the night of October 16, 2003. Jani Leinonen was then living in the apartment. In addition to Leinonen, Raimo Andersson and Ünsal’s childhood friend Janne Raninen were also involved in the murder.
Only those involved know exactly how it happened, but this is how Raninen described it on Yle’s Swedish podcast “The Assassination of Volkan Ünsal”:
– Jani hits Volkan with a baseball bat and strangles him. Raimo holds his feet. Jani asks me to hand over the scart and Jani completes the choke with it, Raninen says on the podcast.
Volkan Ünsal was a Swedish-Turkish criminal and the motive for the murder was revenge for Ünsal stealing part of the loot from a robbery at Arlanda airport in 2002, where Leo Carmona is said to have been involved. Raninen knew both Ünsal and Carmona and they grew up together in a suburb on the outskirts of Stockholm.
One of the killers contacted the police in 2015.
In 2015, Jani Leinonen contacted a police investigator who investigated the murder from 2003 to 2004. He said he has information about the murder that did not come to light in the previous investigation.
He was surprised that Vilhunen’s role was not properly investigated during the previous police investigation and he thought that Aarnio knew about the murder beforehand but let it happen, investigated it with knowledge of certain details and stuck a feather in his cap.
At the time of the murder, Aarnio was the head of the anti-drug police in Helsinki, while the root of the violence was investigating the murder. The drug police were still on a corner and one of Aarnio’s subordinates was in the group investigating the murder.
Vilhunen was heard during the first murder investigation as suspected of being an accessory to the murder, but the suspicions were dismissed and they did not go to trial.
Jani Leinonen, who was previously convicted of Ünsal’s murder, was heard as a witness at the retrial. He will be released on parole in 2021.
Middle-aged man standing and looking through a large window.
Photograph: Yle / Christoffer Gröhn
Aarnio denied having received prior information about the murder
Aarnio denied during the trial having received information about the plans to assassinate Ünsal.
– We did not receive any information about plans to kill Ünsal. We received drug-related information about those involved in the case, Aarnio said in court.
The police were suspicious of those who murdered Ünsal of a serious drug offense in the time before the murder, and therefore intercepted his phone calls.
Vilhunen and Aarnio’s defense in the prosecution went wrong
Vilhunen and Aarnio kept in contact during the murder because Vilhunen was the source of the police information. The collaboration started in 1999.
Vilhunen and Aarnio’s defense of the charges went hand in hand. Vilhunen said that he tried to obtain information about the murder in advance to inform Aarnio, while Aarnio claimed that he had no information about the murder plans.
Vilhunen denied to the prosecution that he was involved in organizing the murder.
– I have not given you any commission, he said when he was heard in court.
“Since Vilhunen asked, I answered yes”
Jani Leinonen’s version of events is different.
– Keijo Vilhunen asked me if I wanted to receive the order and as he asked, I answered yes. I had just been evicted from my apartment in Nordsjö and I thought they could therefore take Volkan there, Leinonen said when he was heard in court in October.
According to Leinonen, Raimo Andersson was already part of the plan. Andersson was heard in the new preliminary investigation but not in court because he was murdered in the spring of 2018. That murder probably has nothing to do with this case.
Central Witness of Swedish Retired Police
A key witness in the case, and especially in the case against the verdict against Aarnio, is a Swedish police officer named Ali Lindholm. He testified in court and later said that he learned of the threats against Ünsal from Aarnio. He is now retired.
The district court finds your testimony credible.
“Based on the Lindholm story, it has been clarified that Aarnio knew on September 29, 2003 that Ünsal was with Raninen in Finland,” the district court writes.
17 days later, Ünsal was dead. His body has never been found.
There is no precedent
Aarnio’s defense noted during the trial that the section on crimes of genuine negligence was not incorporated into the law until the fall of 2003. The prosecutor justified the accusation with previous jurisprudence, although the section had not yet entered into force when the incident occurred. murder.
The district court writes in its ruling that there is no precedent for false crimes of negligence when it comes to crimes against life. But the Supreme Court has given several false negligence crime precedents with respect to other types of crimes, including causing harm.
In 2013, the Turku Court of Appeal convicted a person of involuntary manslaughter under the section on crimes of genuine negligence, but in that case the Supreme Court did not grant authorization to appeal.
“The verdict is a shock”
This case is very likely to continue in the Helsinki Court of Appeal.
Aarnio’s defense attorney, Riitta Leppiniemi, announced Tuesday afternoon that Aarnio will appeal the verdict.
– The verdict is a shock and Aarnio will certainly be upset, says Leppiniemi.
