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After a year and a half of fighting, the Swedish Prison and Probation Service wins against the Swede, who was previously sentenced to death.
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Kim Eriksson Sirawan won last winter’s battle against three Swedish authorities and had his sentence shortened.
Now the decision is withdrawn.
– You are very disappointed, extremely disappointed with this verdict, says your lawyer Harri Keränen.
The Swede, now 39, was arrested in the summer of 2010 in Thailand after running a drug lab in a garage. It also had 53 grams of methamphetamine.
The drug lunatic imposed a death sentence on him, something that instead turned him into life in prison when he was a foreigner in the country.
During his time in Thai institutions, such as the infamous Bambat Phiset, Klong Prem, and Bang Kwang, he fought for his release. After a pardon, he was sentenced to 36 years and eight months in prison.
Kim Eriksson Sirawan had to spend eight years in terror prisons before the Thai authorities, after several diplomatic shifts, agreed that he would be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence in a Swedish prison.
Photo: PETER WIXTRÖM
Here’s Kim Eriksson Sirawan on Swedish soil at Arlanda airport.
After the victory: the verdict is broken
In January 2019 he was transferred to Sweden. In connection with that, the sentence was commuted to 18 years in prison.
But in calculating the sentence of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, the sentence was combined with a previous Swedish prison sentence of three years and three months. Therefore, the total time was 21 years and three months.
Since then, Kim Eriksson Sirawan and lawyer Harri Keränen have started legal proceedings with the aim of their early release.
They believe, among other things, that the statute of limitations for the previous prison sentence has expired and that under Swedish law it is not possible to exceed 18 years in prison for various crimes.
Therefore, they opposed the decision of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, which chose to defend itself. The 39-year-old inmate took the case to Administrative Court, after which they also followed the line of the Prison and Probation Service.
Kim Eriksson Sirawan then appealed to the Court of Appeals, which in December confirmed the 39-year-old man and decided that the authority should shorten his sentence.
But now, after more than a year and a half since the battle began, the Supreme Administrative Court, which is the final instance in Sweden, has overturned the judgment of the Court of Appeal and ruled that the Swedish Prison and Probation Service has done the right thing.
Therefore, Kim Eriksson Sirawan will serve the entire prison sentence.
Lawyer: it’s down
– He’s depressed, but somewhere he thought that considering how they’d treated him before, it wasn’t entirely unexpected for him. Previously, he had hoped authorities would listen to him, says his representative, attorney Harri Keränen.
The lawyer believes, among other things, that the case of the 39-year-old man is “unproven ground” and that the last effort now had the opportunity to clarify the law since according to the Penal Code he cannot be sentenced to more than 18 years prison, if not life imprisonment.
– In Swedish law, there is no provision addressing this situation, and the Supreme Administrative Court had the opportunity to remedy this deficiency. In this situation, you have to look at the rules of the Penal Code where it seems that the maximum prison sentence is 18 years or life imprisonment. There’s nothing in between
As Supreme Court rulings can serve as a precedent, on which lesser efforts can be based, the lawyer says this case can lead to serious ruling decisions.
– In practice, this now means, as interpreted by the Supreme Administrative Court law, that one can be sentenced to a penalty that is significantly higher than what is possible in Swedish law, as in the case of Kim, and it is also theoretically possible that a person can get 30 years in prison.
– There is a reason, we believe, why a maximum limit was established in the penal system, and it is set at 18 years or life imprisonment. There are many interests as to why you decided to be 18 and nothing more, but now you go and ignore those interests.
“We will continue fighting”
Attorney Harri Keränen also says the ruling creates uncertainty about when authorities will use the law in the future.
– This interpretation makes the layout unpredictable. Precisely because it is placed in the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, which must decide in the individual case the length of a sentence. It leads to arbitrariness, and the law should never be arbitrary but predictable.
He will therefore take Kim Eriksson’s Sirawan case to the Court of Justice of the European Communities.
– The idea of a law is that if you commit a crime, you must be able to predict the consequences of the action, but with the interpretation of the Supreme Administrative Court it is not possible. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled in several cases that a provision is considered a violation of Article 5 if it does not predict, among other things, and that is what we believe it is not, it says and adds:
– We will continue fighting.
With the Supreme Administrative Court ruling, this means that Kim Eriksson Sirawan is expected to be paroled on August 6, 2024.
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