Key witness gives evidence from behind bullet-proof screen on day three of murder trial

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The third day in the Ünsal murder trial in Helsinki District Court brought a surprise, particularly for the defence. One of the most significant witnesses was heard already on Wednesday, although her testimony was originally scheduled for today - Thursday.
      The witness was the fiancée of the vanished Swedish criminal Volkan Ünsal, and her early hearing was likely to be related to security issues. She gave evidence on Wednesday evening from behind a bullet-proof screen without being seen by the suspects.
     
The woman told the court of the situation Ünsal was in when he left for Finland to meet his old friend.
      "He knew that he would never be forgiven for the fact that he had talked to the police", the witness said, referring to Ünsal’s contribution to the large currency robbery at Arlanda Airport in 2002. She said that the man had been involved in planning it, but that he and the other perpetrators later fell out over the heist.
      The woman witnessed that Ünsal was crying over the phone, as he knew that something bad would happen to him. According to her, he was afraid that a fellow-criminal of Chilean extraction, who is now suspected of hiring the killer, would take action after Ünsal had informed the police that the man had been involved in the robbery.
      Moreover, he had asked his fiancée to contact the Swedish police officer who was in charge of the witness protection programme, in the event that anything happened to him. On the same day as she reported Ünsal missing, she received the first threatening note stating that the man did not exist any more.
     
Further witnesses included the two men who used trained dogs to search for bloodstains or other traces of a body in the apartment where Ünsal was allegedly killed.
      Police have had search dogs at their disposal since 1993 and the witnesses said that they were quite sure of their observations. Both dogs marked the same places, for instance in the living room and bathroom.
     
Furthermore, a researcher of the National Bureau of Investigation gave a presentation on modern forensic audio investigation techniques. This had been useful when the police tried to find out what was actually said in the taped telephone calls gathered from a Helsinki hotel room in November last year.
      The recording is not of very high quality, and loud rock music can be heard in the background when one of the suspects allegedly tells a colleague about the homicide he had performed two weeks earlier.
      The accused dismissed the prosecution's interpretation of the tape as mere conjecture and claimed that he had been drinking and had just wanted to calm down and accompany his friend who was on leave from prison.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Murder trial hears defendants' explanations on Tuesday (15.12.2004)

Helsingin Sanomat