Tampere pizza restaurant arson trial began on Friday

A criminal trial involving the fire that destroyed a pizza restaurant in the centre of Tampere in November last year began on Friday.
      Initial suspicions were that the fire, which claimed three lives in the building above the ground-level pizzeria, would have been a racist crime motivated by the ethnicity of the Kurdish owners. Now, however, it is the proprietors of the restaurant who are being prosecuted, suspected of having set the fire as an insurance scam.
      The surveillance camera footage shows two dark hooded figures walking in and out of the door of the pizzeria. At one point they are standing on the street, first appearing to leave, only to come back again.
      One of them gives the door a few kicks, but the glass does not break. The idea is to make the fire look like it was caused by burglars.
     
Soon after five a.m. , Hämeenkatu, the main business street in the centre of Tampere, is not completely deserted. A newspaper deliverer arrives on his bicycle and enters the building.
      Then the men go into the restaurant, come back out again, and leave quickly.
      They had tried to ascertain the location of surveillance cameras in advance, but this one recorded everything.
     
Just 26 seconds later, a massive explosion knocks the door open, flinging furniture and shards of glass at a deadly speed to the other side of the street.
      There is no sound, but it is possible to sense the noise from the footage. Flames rise immediately. The picture becomes foggy and the camera breaks down. Judging from the picture, anyone standing outside the restaurant at the time of the explosion probably would have been killed.
      The blast was caused by more than 40 litres of petrol with several litres of vegetable oil mixed in. The wall of a fast food restaurant next door crashes in. This happened a few seconds after an employee had left the premises.
      Moments later three people in the building die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
     
The arson at the pizza restaurant was a sequence of confusion, poor planning, and bad luck from the very beginning, culminating in a ridiculous amount of petrol being used.
      Harri Vehviläinen, a lawyer representing the next of kin of the victims, is calling for a sentence of manslaughter, because the family members say that the act showed such indifference that deaths were sure to take place.
      Dozens of people were asleep in apartments above the restaurant.
      Vehviläinen says that the perpetrators expected firefighters to reach the scene earlier than they did.
      “It’s not enough to say that they didn’t intend to do this or that, when the actions speak something different”, Vehviläinen said.
     
At Pirkanmaa District Court four young men were sitting with hoods and woollen caps on their heads almost all day, avoiding eye contact with others around them. Family members of the victims were also present.
      Two of the defendants admit openly to what they did, and have offered details about the reasons and the consequences, while two others vehemently deny the charges.
      “I started thinking about burning the place in August. It was my idea”, says a 29-year-old man who was running the pizzeria at a loss.
     
He mentions a hammer that was supposed to be used to break a window from outside as part of the deception.
      The food oil was supposed to slow the spread of the flames fuelled by the fast-burning petrol.
      “I never wanted to hurt anyone”, says the man who planned the fire, shortly before breaking down in tears, after saying that he had tried and failed to sell the restaurant before planning the attempted insurance fraud.
     
Also wiping away tears was the other admitted arsonist. He said that they never imagined that the consequences would be so serious.
      No sentences have been passed in equivalent cases in Finland before, but prison sentences of several years have been imposed in cases of arson where there were no human victims. The maximum sentence is ten years.
      The trial continues today, Monday.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Three dead after early morning fire in Tampere restaurant (UPDATED 15:50, and 19:25) (22.11.2010)
  Five men charged over Tampere pizzeria arson (1.3.2011)
  Police say Tampere pizzeria fire motivated by insurance fraud (22.12.2010)
  Owner arrested for Tampere pizzeria arson (25.11.2010)
  Police suspect arson in deadly restaurant fire in Tampere (23.11.2010)