Nobody was convicted for the bombing at Axel Adler’s street. Photo: Thomas Johansson/TT
Relevant to this article is the article "The court was not allowed to see important evidence at Nazi trial" from earlier today.
Ekot [Swedish public service radio news] has earlier told about the Court of Appeal not getting to see important evidence against one of the prosecuted Nazis in a bombing trial in Gothenburg. Ekot’s review also shows that this evidence was requested already in the District Court.
It is about a bombing against a refugee housing January 5, 2017, where a cleaner was severely injured. During the trial SÄPO [Swedish Security Service] and the responsible prosecutor claimed that they through technical surveillance could tie the Nazi leader Viktor Melin to the purchase of egg timers in the Coop [retail chain] store on Backaplan in Gothenburg. The egg timers were identical to an egg timer that had been used in the bomb.
In the District Court Viktor Melin was convicted for the bombing,but the presiding judge wanted to acquit. He wrote:
”Any accounting of how this technical surveillance has been performed has however not been presented and thus remains doubt whether Viktor Melin time-wise is tied to Coop Backaplan at the time for the purchases.”
The ruling was appealed to the Court of Appeal, but Public Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist sees no reason to more thoroughly give an accounting for the result of the technical surveillance.
– The material we presented in the District Court we presented also in the Court of Appeal in about the same way, in principle.
In the Court of Appeal the evidence is not enough. Viktor Melin is acquitted. But why the prosecutor chose to not include the presentation of the technical evidence, the experts that Ekot has spoken to have difficulty understanding.
– I do not understand it at all. If one has evidence one surely brings it up. One does surely want someone to be convicted. If they also requested exactly that evidence, which one claims to exist, says Ingrid Helmius, lecturer on jurisprudence at Uppsala University.
But it turns out that not even the prosecutor has gotten to take part of the technical surveillance that SÄPO performed. It was too secret deemed SÄPO.
– The material that I got is that which is in the preliminary investigation protocol, says Mats Ljungqvist.
Why have you not gotten to see the reports from the technical surveillance, that is surely rather essential information for a prosecutor?
– It is like this that when it comes to the surveillance methods themselves, then it is methods that are covered by secrecy. So not even I as prosecutor has any real use of finding out exactly which methods that have been used..
Ekot has sought the Security Service for an interview, but they have declined.
This is a translation of the original public service radio article, as it was updated on 2018-03-08, 17:29 local time.
The translation was done, due to global relevance and lack of official translation, by @b9AcE to the best of my ability