Case of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur

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The Guðmundur and Geirfinnur case ( Icelandic Guðmundar- og Geirfinnsmálið ) began in Iceland in 1974 . That year, two men, Guðmundur Einarsson and Geirfinnur Einarsson, disappeared within ten months. On the basis of confessions after intensive interrogation, five men were convicted of the two of them murder and aiding and abetting, although there were no bodies, no witnesses and no forensic evidence; a woman was convicted of perjury. In 2018 - 44 years after the alleged acts - the guilty verdict against the five convicted men was overturned. The still unexplained disappearance of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur, the subsequent arrest of six suspects, their questioning under torture-like conditions and the convictions are considered the most spectacular criminal case and legal scandal in Iceland.

The disappearance

Reykjavík in 1974

On the night of January 26, 1974, Guðmundur Einarsson, an 18-year-old worker, disappeared after a social evening in Hafnarfjörður . Despite the bad weather, he was drunk and made the ten kilometer walk home, presumably over a lava field with many crevices. He was last seen by a driver after he almost fell in front of his vehicle.

Ten months later, on November 19, 1974, the 32-year-old construction worker Geirfinnur Einarsson, father of two, received a call at home and drove to the harbor café in Keflavík . His car was found there and the keys were still in it; he himself had disappeared.

Although both men had the personal name ( patronymic ) Einarsson , they were not related to each other and probably did not know each other. The places where they disappeared are near the capital Reykjavík in southwest Iceland, around 30 kilometers apart. The bodies of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur or other evidence were never found, despite extensive searches in lava fields, in the harbor and on the coast.

Iceland was a fairly isolated country at the time; the crime rate was low and homicides were the exception. The disappearance of the two men within ten months led to a hitherto unknown public excitement; Because of the third cod war , the mood among the approximately 200,000 inhabitants of the country was already extremely tense. Although people are repeatedly reported missing in Iceland who disappear without a trace in snowstorms , for example , the Icelandic police felt under great pressure to investigate these cases. After all, she assumed two interrelated acts and murder.

Investigations and convictions

Interrogations and confessions

The following year, on December 13, 1975, the 20-year-old Erla Bolladóttir (* 1955) was arrested for embezzlement. She confessed to having committed this embezzlement together with her boyfriend Sævar Ciesielski, who was known to the police. Erla had an eleven week old daughter with him. She was detained for several days. According to her later information, the police officers showed her a photo of Guðmundur Einarsson at the end of their interrogation and she admitted that she knew him. She felt weakened from the birth and urgently wanted to go home to her child. In order to please the officers and to be released, she reported to the police about a bad dream that she had the night Gudmundur disappeared and in which she heard male voices under her window.

The police then tried to convince them that this was not a dream, but actually happened. Erla continued to be interrogated over the following days, sometimes ten hours without a break. At one point she accused her half-brother Einar Bollason , the President of the Icelandic Basketball Federation and national player, and other men of murder, then again claimed that she herself killed Geirfinnur Einarsson with a shotgun, whereupon the accused were released after three months of pre-trial detention.

Finally, on the basis of further statements, five men were arrested on suspicion of the murder of Guðmundur Einarsson and Geirfinnur Einarsson and imprisoned in what was then Síðumúli prison in Reykjavík. These were:

  • Sævar Marinó Ciesielski (1955–2011)
  • Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson (1951-2009)
  • Kristján Viðar Viðarsson (* 1955)
  • Albert Klahn Skaftason (* 1955)
  • Guðjón Skarphéðinsson (* 1943)

The suspects belonged to a clique of young people with long hair who listened to rock music and took drugs, and who were outsiders in Iceland's then very conservative and homogeneous society. Ciesielski was also of Polish origin, which obviously made him even more suspicious. The five men, some of whom had criminal records of minor offenses, and Erla were subjected to intense pressure during intensive interrogations and they had little contact with their lawyers. They were drugged ( nitrazepam , diazepam and chlorpromazine ), deprived of sleep, and in particular the alleged leader Sævar Ciesielski, who suffered from aquaphobia , was tortured with simulated drowning . They were also constantly harassed by their guards, and Erla later said she was sexually molested by a police officer and a prison guard.

The accused took turns making and withdrawing confessions or telling new versions of the alleged crime. They later testified that they had finally confessed to avoid further interrogation and specifically to end their solitary confinement. Erla Bolladóttir, for example, was in solitary confinement for 242 days and had three visits from her lawyer. Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson spent 655 days in solitary confinement and had 25 contacts with his lawyer.

Eventually, the six accused signed confessions, although they could not remember the alleged crimes. In December 1976 Sævar Ciesielski, Kristján Viðar Viðarsson, Albert Klahn Skaftason and Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson were convicted for the murder of Guðmundur. In March 1977 the defendants were sentenced to the following total sentences for the second murder of Geirfinnur: Sævar Ciesielski - 17 years imprisonment, Kristján Viðar Viðarsson - 16 years imprisonment, Guðjón Skarphéðinsson - 10 years imprisonment, Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson - 13 years. Albert Klahn Skaftason was sentenced to twelve months for helping to hide Gudmundur's body. Erla Bolladóttir was sentenced to three years for perjury because she had falsely incriminated her half-brother and other men with her statements. In the media, Erla later said, Sævar Ciesielski was portrayed as the Icelandic Charles Manson and his friends as devoted followers. In 1980 the Supreme Court upheld the judgments, but reduced the length of prison sentences in some cases.

German involvement in the investigation

From July 1976 the investigations of the Icelandic police were led by a newly retired employee of the BKA , who had already been involved in the investigation into the Red Army faction and the Lebach murders . In 1962 he had led the search of the editorial offices of the Spiegel ( Spiegel affair ).

Horst Herold , the President of the Federal Criminal Police Office, had put the German investigator in charge of the Icelanders at the request of the later ambassador to Germany, Pétur Eggerz . The international political background was the third cod war : the Icelandic government used the NATO military bases in the country as a bargaining chip in the negotiations on fishing rights with Great Britain . Against the backdrop of the Cold War, it was feared that Iceland would leave NATO and close the bases from which the Soviet Union could be easily reached.

There were allegations against the former Prime Minister and then Justice Minister Ólafur Jóhannesson , who was considered the “tough man” behind the negotiations, that he had contacts with the “Icelandic Mafia” and was involved in alcohol smuggling. Since the disappearance of Geirfinnur was in the meantime attributed to involvement in alcohol smuggling, the impression arose among the population that Ólafur might have something to do with his alleged death. There are suspicions that this suspicion was constructed by the secret services in order to discredit the uncomfortable Ólafur. The Icelandic government therefore wanted the murder investigation to be ended as soon as possible and therefore asked for German support.

The tightened interrogation methods against the six suspects are said to have continued under the responsibility of the former BKA employee. Evidence such as clothing, carpet scraps and blood samples were sent to a BKA laboratory , which could not find any matches. During the graphological examination of entries in a guest book, which could have provided some suspects with an alibi, the BKA noted that the specimens produced in custody could have been “deliberately misaligned”. The German official then requested Icelandic school files "as completely as possible since 1900" in order to be able to compare writings. The Icelandic officials were impressed by the German's thorough workmanship.

In February 1977 Attorney General Ólafur Jóhannesson announced that the suspects had confessed, the investigation was closed and "the nation was free from a nightmare". The former BKA employee and head of investigation, BKA boss Herold, and Siegfried Fröhlich , State Secretary in the Interior Ministry , were honored with the Icelandic Order of the Falcons in the Grand Cross (Fröhlich) class and Commander with a star (Herold).

The long road to resumption

Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson (here 2003) advocated the reopening of the legal proceedings

Doubt and criticism of the judgments

In 1998, then Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson in the Icelandic parliament criticized the investigation into the Guðmundur and Geirfinnur cases and the convictions of the alleged perpetrators after the Hæstiréttur , the Supreme Court of Iceland, ruled that it would not try the case again. Davíð stated that he studied the case intensively and came to the conclusion that serious mistakes had been made at every level. He is therefore disappointed with the decision of the court and believes that it would have been good for the judicial system to re-examine the case: "There was not just one, but many judicial errors and it is very difficult to live with." Most Icelanders now believed that the six prisoners had been wrongly sentenced. In 2018 it became known that Davíð himself had supported Sævar Ciesielski financially in his efforts to have the proceedings reopened.

Sævar Ciesielski, "Iceland's Most Notorious Criminal", was released in 1984. After repeatedly refusing to reopen the process, he finally left Iceland and moved to Denmark. In 2011 he had a fatal accident in Copenhagen after years of homelessness and alcoholism. Most recently he lived in Christiania . The funeral service for him took place on August 2, 2011 with a large public participation in Reykjavík Cathedral .

Research by the Icelandic journalist Helga Arnardóttir after the death of Sævar Cieselski in 2011, during which she also looked at the prison diary of Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson, who died of cancer in 2009, and a following report on television brought the case back to life. In October 2011, the Icelandic Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson set up a commission of inquiry into the missing persons of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur, which two years later presented a 500-page report. The commission concluded that the statements made by the defendants during interrogation and in court were unreliable or false and should never have served as grounds for conviction. She recommended that the Sævar Ciesielski, Kristján Viðar Viðarsson, Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson, Albert Klahn Skaftason and Guðjón Skarphéðinsson cases should be retried by the Supreme Court of Iceland, but not the Erla Bolladóttir case for perjury.

In its assessment, the commission referred, among other things, to the findings of Gísli Guðjónsson , professor of psychiatry and internationally renowned expert on interrogations and confessions, who had already been involved in reassessing the confessions in the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four cases . He coined the term Memory Distrust Syndrome for confessions from suspects who, through methods such as solitary confinement and sleep deprivation, get into a psychological state of emergency in which they no longer trust their own memories and begin to believe the interrogators more than themselves. Finally, they lay down Confessions to put an end to this situation. Gísli Guðjónsson concluded: “I have never faced a case in which there has been such intense interrogation, so many interrogations and so long solitary confinement cases. I was absolutely shocked when I saw that. ”Tryggvi Runar's solitary confinement is the longest known to him outside of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp .

There were also more recent statements: In 2015, for example, the witness who had stated that he had fallen in front of the car in the night before January 27, 1974, was interrogated again. Meanwhile, his girlfriend had testified that Gudmundur had got into the car afterwards. The witness then drove her home, when she got out, Guðmundur was in a “deplorable” condition. It was this witness who is said to have brought suspicion to Kristján Viðar Viðarsson and Sævar Ciesielski. Tryggvi Rúnar later reported in an interview that this witness had confessed to him that he had done it because he didn't like Kristján Viðar. He "didn't want" all of this. Tryggvi Rúnar's question to the interviewer: "Can you imagine that?"

At the end of 2016, a man reported to the police and said that he had seen three men board a boat in Keflavík on November 20, 1974, the day after Geirfinnur's disappearance. One of the three made a weakened impression. Two of the men came back later alone. The witness's friend said that a few days later she received a call threatening her and her boyfriend with death.

Readmission and acquittals

In February 2018, the public prosecutor asked the Supreme Court to overturn the convictions of Sævar Ciesielski, Kristján Viðar Viðarsson, Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson, Albert Klahn Skaftason, Guðjón Skarphéðinsson and Erla Bolladóttir. On September 27, 2018, the Supreme Court granted this request for the five men, but did not overturn Erla Bolladóttir's conviction of perjury. The Icelandic government officially apologized to the five men and the families of the deceased. In May 2019, Andrej Hunko , a member of the Bundestag for the Left , demanded in a small question in the German Bundestag that the federal government should pay compensation to the five acquitted because of the involvement of the BKA. He also appealed to the living German officials involved at the time and the families of the deceased to return the Icelandic medals. The federal government refused such payments on the grounds that the former BKA employee was involved in the investigation as a private person.

In October 2019, it was announced that the Icelandic Attorney General Halla Bergþóra Björnsdóttir had started a new investigation into the disappearance of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur. The focus is initially on testimony given later in 2015 and in 2016.

In January 2020, Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir announced that the Icelandic treasury would pay the five acquitted or their family members compensation totaling 815 million Icelandic kroner (around six million euros).

Movies

  • A documentary film directed by Dylan Howitt entitled Out of Thin Air was released in 2017 and produced by BBC, Netflix , RÚV , Welcome Trust and the Icelandic Film Center .
  • In 2017 an Icelandic film called Lifun was made, directed by Egill Örn Egilsson .
  • The Reykjavik Confessions . TV series (IS / GB). 2018.
  • Scandal . Four-part documentary by Boris Quatram .

literature

  • Anthony Adeane: Out of Thin Air: A True Story of Impossible Murder in Iceland . Quercus, 2018, ISBN 978-1-78648-746-9 .
  • Simon Cox: The Reykjavik Confessions: The Incredible True Story of Iceland's Most Notorious Murder Case . BBC Books, 2018, ISBN 978-1-78594-288-4 .
  • Jack Latham: Sugar Paper Theories . Here Press, 2019, ISBN 978-1-9993494-2-4 .

Web links

Commons : Kriminalfall Guðmundur and Geirfinnur  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruno Bailey: Murder, Conspiracy Theories and Elves: The Strangest Criminal Case in Iceland. In: vice.com . October 23, 2016, accessed June 15, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson: From Iceland - An End To The Neverending Nightmare? In: grapevine.is. April 15, 2013, accessed June 10, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b Murder in Iceland: Prosecutor and defense demand acquittal. In: nordisch.info. September 22, 2018, accessed June 10, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c d “Sugar Paper Theories” and the Reykjavik Confessions. In: innocent.org.uk. July 31, 2017, accessed June 10, 2020 .
  5. ↑ a b c Paula Cocozza: 'Deep down, I knew it didn't happen': The woman whose memory invented a murder story. In: theguardian.com . February 15, 2018, accessed June 10, 2020 .
  6. ↑ a b The Reykjavik Connection in 39 Steps. In: 30nine.net. Retrieved June 12, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Anthony Adeane: Out of Thin Air. Hachette UK, 2018, ISBN 1786487454 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  8. ^ Out of Thin Air. In: outofthinairfilm.com. Retrieved June 17, 2020 (English).
  9. ^ Richard Milne: Shades of gray: those who confessed to a crime they don't remember. In: Financial Times. August 26, 2016, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  10. ^ A b c d Matthias Monroy: Justice scandal in Iceland under the direction of "Commissioner Kugelblitz". In: heise.de . May 12, 2019, accessed July 22, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Augstein portrait: The first look in the mirror. In: welt.de . November 8, 2002, accessed June 14, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Gisli H. Gudjonsson: The Psychology of False Confessions. John Wiley & Sons, 2018, ISBN 1-119-31569-7 , p. 143 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  13. ↑ a b German Bundestag (19th WP): Support of the BKA with false confessions in Icelandic murder investigations. Small request from April 29, 2019 (PDF file)
  14. ↑ Ekki eitt dómsmorð heldur mörg. In: mbl.is. October 7, 1998, accessed June 11, 2020 (Icelandic).
  15. ^ A b c Egill Helgason: The Tragic Story of Sævar Ciesielski. In: grapevine.is. July 29, 2011, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Davíð styrkti Sævar um "væna" fjárhæð. In: visir.is. Retrieved June 11, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Freyr Gunnarsson Gígja: Davíð Oddsson styrkti Sævar Ciesielski. In: RÚV. July 25, 2018. Retrieved September 27, 2018 (Icelandic).
  18. ↑ Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson: Taldi skynsamlegt að JATA Rangar sakargiftir. In: mbl.is. Retrieved June 11, 2020 (Icelandic).
  19. ^ Iceland's most famous disappearance case back to court next week. In: icelandmonitor.mbl.is. August 10, 2017, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Gisli Gudjonsson: Memory Distrust syndromes Confabulation and False Confession. In: Cortex. Volume 87, 2017, pp. 156-165, DOI: 10.1016 / j.cortex.2016.06.013 .
  21. ↑ Murder cases: Expert working group advises retrial. In: icelandreview.com. March 27, 2013, accessed June 10, 2020 .
  22. ↑ a b Guðmundur and Geirfinnur Cold Case Re-Opened? In: icelandreview.com. November 29, 2018, accessed June 10, 2020 .
  23. ↑ Anthony Adeane: Out of Thin Air. Hachette UK, 2018, ISBN 1786487454 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  24. ↑ Allir sýknaðir í Guðmundar- og Geirfinnsmálunum. In: visir.is. September 27, 2018, accessed June 11, 2020 (Icelandic).
  25. ^ All found innocent in Guðmundur and Geirfinns case, 44 years after the supposed crimes were committed. In: icelandmonitor.mbl.is. September 27, 2018, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  26. ^ Compensation considered in historic case. In: ruv.is. October 1, 2018, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  27. ^ Reply of the Ministry of the Interior v. May 13, 2019 , accessed June 11, 2020.
  28. ^ Tip in Iceland's Infamous Missing Person Case Being Investigated. In: icelandmonitor.mbl.is. October 1, 2019, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  29. ^ Compensation Awarded in Guðmundur and Geirfinnur Case. In: icelandreview.com. February 10, 2020, accessed on June 11, 2020 .
  30. ^ Iceland's most famous missing person case on Netflix and BBC. In: icelandmonitor.mbl.is. March 13, 2017, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  31. ↑ Imagine Murder. In: kisi.is. June 17, 2016, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  32. ^ Nancy Tartaglione: 'The Reykjavik Confessions': Buccaneer Media, Balt Kormakur's RVK Studios Plot True Crime Drama. In: deadline.com. April 27, 2017, accessed June 11, 2020 .
  33. ↑ New film on Geirfinnur Missing Person Case. In: icelandmonitor.mbl.is. April 18, 2019, accessed June 11, 2020 .
This article was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 10, 2020 in this version .