A man from Trøndelag is charged with double murder in Sierra Leone after he arranged an interview earlier this year and said that he has worked as a mercenary.
“In the interview, he tells of a murder he allegedly committed. We received several inquiries about this and chose to examine it,” sheriff Rune Halvorsen from the Fosen sheriff department says to Fosna people.
He says Norwegian police have not been in contact with the Sierra Leonean authorities on the matter, and that the interview is the entire background of the indictment.
“The man was arrested Tuesday but released again the same day because there was no basis for holding him,” said police inspector Per Morten Brobakke in Trøndelag Police District told NRK news.
In the interview the man, who is in his 30s, claims that the security company he worked for sent him to Guinea and then to Sierra Leone along with a group of mercenaries. He says he only later realized that he was not allowed in the country.
In the interview he says he witnessed rebels in the country carrying out a series of abuses against others. He says he killed two people after seeing them raping a woman.
Police deny the man’s guilt. His lawyer, Kristin Bugge Midthjell, told NTB that she does not currently have enough information to comment on the matter.
“The case is being investigated further,” said police inspector Brobakke to the newspaper VG. He would not comment on what, if anything, police confiscated when they ransacked his apartment.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today