Helsinki District Court has sentenced Jari Aarnio,the former head of Helsinki police department’s narcotics department, to life imprisonment for his role in an October 2003 murder.
According to the court, Aarnio had advance knowledge of the planned contract killing of Swedish-Turkish national Volgan Ünsalbut did nothing to prevent the crime from taking place. Under Finnish law, if a police officer knows a murder is about to occur and does nothing to stop it, they can be convicted of murder and given a life sentence in prison.
This is the first conviction of its kind in Finnish legal history.
Meanwhile, the murder charge against Aarnio’s co-accused, former gang boss Keijo Vilhunen, was dismissed after the court ruled that the prosecution had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Vilhunen had been involved.
Four men – three Finnish nationals and a Swedish man who ordered the hit – have previously been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder on 16 October 2003 in Vuosaari, Helsinki.
Advance knowledge of murder
According to the prosecutor in the case, Aarnio was informed in the summer of 2003 that a contract had been taken out on the life of Ünsal – who had stolen money from an accomplice in a robbery at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport, went into a witness protection programme but then left it.
Aarnio warned Swedish police of the murder plot sometime before Ünsal travelled to Finland in September 2003.
The court therefore found that Aarnio had a duty of responsibility to protect the life of Ünsal, as he also imposed surveillance on the suspected perpetrators within Finland, but failed to tell others of his advance knowledge and did not take any action to protect Ünsal.
Aarnio denied the charge at the trial. According to his defence, the former police chief did not have any information that could have prevented the crime, but the court dismissed this argument.
Aarnio is already serving a 13-year prison sentence for a slew of offences related to drug trafficking and official misconduct.