Two asylum seekers have been sentenced to prison for the killing of a local resident in Kajaani this past September. Kajaani District Court sentenced the Iraqi men, born in 1988 and 1997, on Friday. The 52-year-old man was killed in Otanmäki, a village within Kajaani’s city limits.

The older perpetrator, Ali Qasim Hammood Beni Zaid, was handed a prison term of 10 years and 10 months for homicide. Ahmed Hussein Ali Ali was sentenced to six years in prison for aggravated manslaughter.

The men were also sentenced for aggravated robbery and payment fraud.

The perpetrators were ordered to pay legal fees, funeral costs as well as damages for emotional suffering to the victim’s relatives.

The court declared that the victim died due to violence directed at his upper body and head, but that the younger assailant’s actions did not directly cause his death.

Prosecutor Jorma Mikkonen had sought a 10-year sentence for both defendants.

Financial motive

The victim, a local man born in 1964, was found dead on the morning of Otanmäki of Sunday, September 11. The same night, another local man, born in 1975, was also robbed in the village. The muggers stole his mobile phone and a small amount of cash.

During their trial in late November, the defendants admitted to kicking and striking the man, but denied murdering him. They also admitted to carrying out payment fraud, and said that their violence was motivated by a desire to obtain money from the victims.

The prosecutor says that the violence was much worse than admitted by the defendants, noting that there were marks made by an edged weapon on the victim’s face and that he had a skull fracture.

The defendants gave conflicting accounts of the night’s events. The younger man claimed that the older man had forced him to take part in the crimes.

After the men were detained, the Otanmäki reception centre came under stepped-up police surveillance and was eventually closed.

YLE