Two Swedes of Somali decent have been acquitted of planning terrorist crimes in Somalia by a Swedish court of appeal.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Swedish prosecutors appealed the verdict, only to have the Court of Appeal for Western Sweden release the two men at the conclusion of the trial, pending the announcement of the verdict.
In a unanimous ruling, the appeals court came to the same conclusion as a minority of justices on the district court, namely that the evidence was insufficient to convict the men.
The court ruled that prosecutors hadn't been able to back up their claims, which meant that the court never examined the human rights aspects of the case concerning whether or not the Al-Shabaab militia was involved in an armed conflict.
The men had been held in remand for several months in a case in which prosecutors relied on evidence gathered from wiretaps carried out by Swedish security service Säpo.
According to prosecutors, the man both had ties to the Somali Islamist al-Shabaab militia, and the district court agreed, finding the two Swedish citizens "had taken it upon themselves, and decided with the Somali Islamist Al-Shabaab militia to commit terrorist crimes in the form of suicide attacks."
Both men denied the charges against them, but one of them has admitted that he spent time in an Al-Shabaab training camp.
While the appeals court noted that Al-Shabaab had used suicide bomb attacks, nothing had emerged that "even indicates that a person who joins or in some other way is active in Al-Shabaab has automatically volunteered to carry out a suicide bomb attack".
Source: The Local