Finland 2023

06/03/2023: Finnish authorities have completed a preliminary investigation into the Spanish citizen suspected of training to commit a terrorist crime and arrested in December 2022 in Finland. The case has now been moved to considerations of charges. During the preliminary investigation and in the district court, the man said he was interested in the groups' activities, especially their theological background. He admitted that he agreed with the groups on some issues. However, he always claimed to have condemned violent activity. According to the man, he feigned admiration for extremist groups in conversations to earn the trust of his interlocutors and gain access to terrorist material. The district court did not believe the man's explanation, but considered as proven that the defendant had genuinely admired the activities of extremist groups and trained with the intention of  contributing himself. (Source)

28/03/2023: Supo has published the 2022 Yearbook summarizing the trends of terrorism threat recorded throughout 2022. Some 350 individuals are identifed targets of counterterrorism operations in Finland. It was reported that Supo identifed some individual supporters of Islamism ideology with the capacity and motivation to mount a terrorist attack notably the Spanish man that was arrested in December 2022. (Source)

28/04/2023: The Helsinki District Court on Friday convicted the 22-year-old Spanish man of training to commit a terrorist crime. He received a four-month suspended sentence. This is the second conviction for a terrorist offense in Finnish criminal history, the first being Abderrahman Bouanane, the Moroccan terrorist who committed the Turku attack back in 2017 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Prosecutors are demanding a minimum sentence of one and a half years in prison for the Spanish man. The district court took into account that the defendant had not previously been sentenced to imprisonment. Therefore, the sentence was suspended. He was expelled from the country in August 2023.

17/08/2023: Despite the terror threat level that was raised to four on a five-point scale by Swedish authorities in reaction to the growing insecurity in the Quran burnings' wake, this situation has not so far affected Finland's terrorist threat level according to Supo. Sweden on the other hand, has now been an exceptional target of radical Islamist propaganda, meaning the situation is different than in Finland. (Source

31/08/2023: The Finnish National Criminal Police (KRP) has begun investigating suspected illegal threats made with terrorist intent. A total of seven criminal suspicions have been recorded this year related to suspicious packages sent to political party offices last spring. Most of the seven cases under investigation were initially addressed as illegal threats. Later, the police began to suspect that the acts had a terrorist intent. Even though few information was shared by KRP, new elements allowed to confirm on July 5, 2024 that Far-Right activists were involved. However, the case was reminiscent of a previously investigated case under the same criminal offence, in which a man from Pori, slightly over 20, of Pakistani origin, was suspected of threatening politicians with violence in the mid-2010s. The preliminary investigation into the case has never been completed. The man from Pori, who used the name Abu Hurairah Finlandi, is suspected of having died in a suicide attack in northern Iraq in 2015, although the police did not receive confirmation from the Iraqi authorities.

In the current Finnish legislation, "an illegal threat made with terrorist intent" can mean a variety of acts. According to the Criminal Code, an illegal threat means an act in which the threatened person has a justified reason to fear that their own safety or that of another person or their property is in serious danger. In order for an illegal threat to be considered made with terrorist intent, the act must also meet certain specific characteristics. One possible condition for the term "terrorism", according to the Criminal Code, is that the perpetrator's intention is to cause serious fear among the population. Another possible condition is an attempt to force a Government, other authority or international organisation to do something without the right. According to the Criminal Code, this could also include the aim of overthrowing the constitution of a State, seriously undermining the legal order or causing particularly great damage to the State's finances. (Source)

03/09/2023: Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published a disturbing investigation regarding the female Finnish Jihadist returnees from al-Hol detention camp that were repatriated by local authorities with their children from Syria since 2020. It turns out that no charges have been brought against them and no actual criminal investigation has even been initiated in Finland into their actions in the IS Caliphate. This is even more alarming considering that the widow of Portuguese Jihadist Nero Saraiva, a well-known IS fighter believed to be involved in the kidnapping of Western hostages, reportedly  resumed her life as a free woman with her children since she returned to Finland back in May 2020. The women who have returned to Finland have settled in several locations. They generally live normal lives and keep a low profile. Some of the women have changed their names and others have worked with the authorities to have their children born in Syria identified and registered as Finnish citizens. IS women can do the same things as other free citizens such as working, start studying or put their children in daycare. On behalf of Finland, they have no travel restrictions. As long as there is no evidence of crimes in the Caliphate either, they are innocentand considered as law-abiding citizens.

Finnish flawed policy toward those retunees heavily contrast with that of other European countries such as Netherlands which harshly convicted of serious crimes those individuals notably another widow of Nero Saraiva who was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Since It was not until April 2022 that a law came into force to make participation in the activities of a terrorist group more punishable than before, including support activities, the returnees could not be proescuted and the law cannot be applied retrospectively to crimes committed during the IS Caliphate. According to doctoral researcher Juha Saarinen: “Finnish women were not isolated cases. Many of them have knowingly gone to the conflict zone and participated in terrorist activities”. Three Finnish women are known to have participated in IS propaganda. Two wrote for IS magazines, Rumiyah and Dabiq. One Finnish woman ran a Twitter account that received international attention under the pseudonym Umm Irhab (Mother of the Terrorist). Finland’s terrorist laws are based on the premise that one must be able to show a concrete, specific act of which the person is guilty. Based on Finnish laws in force during the Caliphate times, a person could in principle travel to IS territory, register as a member of the movement, finance it and participate in weapons training without committing a crime. A crime would only have been committed if the activity could be shown to be related to an individual terrorist act. This would be, for example, obtaining money for a specific bomb attack. Although those who retuned from Syria in 2020 have monopolized public opinion's attention, a larger group of around twenty people returned to Finland from Syria or Iraq before them. Many of them came from the Caliphate. Supo confirms that among those who came to Finland, there were also men who had been IS fighters. None of them have been charged either. Among European countries, Finland is an exception in this regard.

Around ten Finnish Jihadists remain in the al-Hol camp but according to Jussi Tanner, Head of Consular Affairs at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs: “They have practically refused to cooperate and communicate with the Finnish authorities”. Finland cannot therefore repatriate them. The situation is the same in many other European countries. A minority has remained in the camp who do not want to return to their homeland. Deputy head of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, Jonna Turunen, stated that authorities stick to their 2019 assessment according to which the women will likely continue their terrorist activities notably through connections to radical ideology and international networks. (Source)

The revelations of Helsingin Sanomat stirred much indignation among politicians who before long, reacted and openly called for new measures to be implemented for better monitoring of the returnees. Much conflicting opinions were expressed regarding former Foreign Minister and presidential candidate Pekka Haavisto (Greens) who played a key role in the repatriation of the al-Hol women, some considering that he put at stake Finland security while others deeming that he merely acted in compliance with the Government's decision-in-principle to repatriate the children. (Source)

13/11/2023: The Ministry of Justice has set up a working group to reform the legislation on terrorist crimes. According to the Government program, penalties for terrorist crimes will be toughened and the comprehensive reform must respond to current terrorist threats and remove regulatory ambiguity. The focus of the work is on clarifying the characteristics of terrorist crimes and the relationships between them. As such, the punishability of terrorist crimes should cover acts that significantly promote terrorism. This also applies to individuals who perform duties serving their own family in an area controlled by a terrorist organization or group or who otherwise reside in such an area. In addition, the working group will examine, among other things, membership in and affiliation with a terrorist organization or group. Such initiative might be an outcome of the continuous criticism Finland is facing regarding its strengthening, yet still defective, legislation against terrorism, but also a reaction of Finnish authorities to the revelations of Helsingin Sanomat earlier in September 2023. (Source)

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