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Of: TT
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Photo: Fredrik Sandberg / TT
The men deny the crime. Stock Photography.
The Södertälje District Court sentences two men to prison for serious firearm offenses. Important evidence came from the encrypted phone service Encrochat, which was decrypted by Europol this summer.
“The district court ruling shows that encrypted communication between criminals is approved as evidence. With this assessment, the police will use encrypted chats in further investigations,” says Robert Karlsson, deputy chief of regional police in Stockholm, in a press release from police.
The police case began on May 5 this year when a police officer saw the men enter the forest with a shovel. When they got out, the police stopped them and searched the forest, but nothing was found. When police later returned with a search dog, they found a freshly dug pit where a pistol with clips, ammunition and a laser sight was buried.
Chat and images
The men were subsequently arrested, but they have always denied any crimes.
This summer, the police accessed information from the encrypted telephone service Encrochat, which Europol managed to hack. The conversations from there could be linked to a phone found at the home of one of the suspects.
In addition to the images of weapons, which the NFC has judged to be consistent with the weapons found in the forest, the following message was found, which was sent a few hours after police detained the men on May 5:
“The policeman robbed me in NN (suspect) today 5 cars out of nowhere that we had precisely dug into the glock before going with him in the car, hehe, first trip we had.
The district court finds that there is no technical evidence, such as DNA or fingerprints, linking any of the men to the buried weapons, nor can any witnesses link them with certainty to the weapons.
However, a recently used shovel and a pair of dirty gloves were found in the car when the men were detained after leaving the forest.
Strong evidence
Encrochat’s information also stands out as strong evidence:
“Both the talks about the weapon and the message sent at 6:02 p.m. on May 6, are very compromising, especially for NN (the 34-year-old) and of course constitute strong evidence for the prosecution,” he says in the verdict.
However, it is considered proven that the men have committed a serious crime with firearms, and are sentenced to two years and three months and two years and four months in prison, respectively.
“For us, the encrypted chats were almost decisive in terms of evidence. It is clear that they felt secure with the encryption in the chat and therefore they spoke quite openly, something that criminals normally do not do,” he says Daniel Löfgren from the police in Södertälje in the press release.
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