Four men on trial in murder case, despite lack of body
Defence argues the victim chose to disappear without trace
Where is Volkan Ünsal, or where is his body? This question went unanswered yesterday at the start of a trial at Helsinki District Court in which four men are accused of murder or incitement to murder in a case that apparently has links to the Swedish criminal underworld.
Among other things, the court must resolve the significance of taped telephone evidence, gathered from a Helsinki hotel room in November last year by police who were listening to the calls of at least one of the defendants, because it was believed they were involved in drug trafficking.
In the taped telephone call, one of the three men charged with murder, somewhat the worse for alcohol, apparently explains that the victim was strangled and that his body was buried where it could not be found.
What is certainly true is that no body has ever been found in this case, but Volkan Ünsal, a convicted Swedish criminal who at the time of his disappearance was in a Swedish police witness protection programme, was last seen in the company of two of those accused on October 15th last year.
Thereafter, the prosecution alleges, he was taken from a Helsinki restuarant to an apartment in the eastern suburb of Vuosaari, where he was killed. Three men of 27, 34, and 48 years of age face charges of murder. A fourth man, of Chilean extraction, is charged with incitement to murder in that he hired the 27-year-old to do the killing.
The alleged motive is that Ünsal would have taken roughly 2.6 million Swedish crowns from the accused Chilean and that he also informed Swedish police that the accused was involved in a currency robbery that took place at Arlanda International Airport in the summer of 2002. That case has not been fully solved - a total of EUR 4 million went missing, and has not been recovered.
The prosecution has alleged that a bounty was put on Ünsal’s head after he informed on members of the gang, and that he was ultimately lured out of hiding in Turkey by a childhood friend - one of those on trial in Helsinki.
The trial also features a fifth person; the wife of the oldest man on trial for murder is charged with being an accessory to murder in that she rented the van in which the victim’s body was allegedly carried away.
All five deny the charges, and the 27-year-old alleges that the victim faked his own death in order to throw off police and his pursuers, and that he is now living under a new identity, for example somewhere in South America.
The absence of a physical body has not tempered the prosecution’s willingness to take the case to trial: traces of Ünsal’s blood were found at the alleged murder scene, and it is alleged that the sofa and carpet in the apartment were so stained with blood that one of the defendants later burnt them. Also burnt, allege the prosecution, was Ünsal’s expensive Armani jean-jacket. Police found only the fourteen steel buttons from the ashes.
The trial continues.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 14.12.2004 - TODAY |
 Four men on trial in murder case, despite lack of body |
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