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Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Teenaged double murderer files appeal

The defense attorney for a 16-year-old boy who repeatedly stabbed two people to death in Kristiansand last year has appealed his prison sentence. Defense attorney Sein Kjetil Stallemo doesn’t think it’s correct to sentence his young client to 11 years of special custody aimed at protecting the public from him.

“It’s not right with forvaring,” Stallemo told reporters, referring to Norway’s special form of custody that can keep convicts in prison for the rest of their lives. It requires judges to evaluate the likelihood of the convict becoming a repeat offender, every time he or she is up for parole.

Little if any remorse
The 16-year-old showed little if any remorse during his trial this spring and confessed to killing both a schoolmate he didn’t like, 14-year-old Jakob Abdullahi Hassan, and a woman who intervened when she witnessed the stabbing, 48-year-old Tone Ilebekk. She was out walking her family’s dog on December 5 last year when she rushed over to help young Hassan who was bleeding to death in a local school yard.

The 16-year-old then attacked her, with both victims being subjected to more than 30 stabbings each. The assailant explained at his trial that he was upset with Hassan because he allegedly owed him around NOK 600 (USD 71 at current exchange rates.)

The double homicide shocked Kristiansand and received widespread media coverage nationwide. Prosecutors initially sought a 10-year jail term for the teenager, a sentence considered harsh for a juvenile offender in a country that stresses rehabilitation over incarceration.

‘Poses a danger to the public’
The judge in the case, however, determined that the 16-year-old poses such a danger to the public, with the risk of repeat violence so high, that he imposed the special custody terms and a jail term of 11 years, with no chance for parole for at least seven years and four months.

The families of both victims had hoped the case would not be appealed. The attorney appointed for Ilebekk’s family said a new appeals trial “will be an extra burden on them, they had hoped they would be finished with this case in the city court.” The parents of young Hassan also wanted to avoid going through another trial, and listening to the 16-year-old who killed their son.

Stallemo, however, claims he’s just doing his job as defense attorney. He said he had studied the judge’s forvaring sentence closely and believes it’s wrong. His client’s guilt won’t be up for a new evaluation, only his sentence and the length of it.

newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund

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