The mother of a young murder victim in Oslo is unhappy that prosecutors think her son’s murderer should be committed to a mental health institution instead of sentenced to jail. “He’s a very dangerous man,” Inger-Marie Bjørkund told state broadcaster NRK. “Society should be protected so he can’t murder others.”
Bjørklund’s son, Heikki Bjørklund Paltto, was in his ground-floor apartment in Oslo’s Majorstuen district in October 2018 when a young Swede who’d just arrived in Oslo, 22-year-old Makaveli Lindén, broke in and fatally stabbed Paltto 44 times. Lindén had also robbed a man in a nearby garage earlier that morning before fleeing Oslo and heading for initially for Belgium, where he also killed a 58-year-old woman. He was captured by French police less than a week later after attempting his getaway on trains through Europe.
Lindén was quickly described as “aggressive and violent” with a long list of earlier offenses in Sweden. He eventually admitted to murdering Lindén but on the grounds he was too mentally ill to understand what he was doing.
He’s been held since his extradition to Norway at the country’s high-security prison at Ila, outside Oslo. After extensive psychiatric evaluation Lindén was found to be psychotic at the time of the murder, prompting prosecutors to ask an Oslo court to commit him to psychiatric care instead of jail. That means, though, that if he’s ever declared healthy, he can be set free.
“He should never be released,” claimed Bjørklund on Friday as Lindén’s trial in Oslo drew to a close on what would have been her son’s 27th birthday. Lindén’s defense attorney agreed with the prosecutor. Now it’s up to the judge to decide Lindén’s fate before the Belgian murder trial gets underway.
newsinenglish.no staff
