The Norwegian attorney general, Jorn Sigurd Maurud, has offered, “on behalf of the prosecution of the Nordic country, the most sincere apologies” to Viggo Kristiansena man imprisoned since 2001 because he was found guilty of the rape and death of two girls aged eight and 10. He always proclaimed his innocence, even after leaving prison last year after serving his entire sentence.and, now, after the reopening of the case and the discovery that the investigation had huge gaps that were not taken into consideration at the time, the ordeal suffered by Kristiansen has been described as the most serious miscarriage of justice in Norwegian history.
The two girls, Stine Sofie Sorstronen and Lena Slogedal Paulsen, went bathing in a lake in May 2000 and the subsequent discovery of their bodies caused a deep shock in Norway.
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Kristiansen was incriminated by another co-defendant of the crime, Jan Helge Andersen, who obtained some benefits in the sentence for collaborating with the police in clarifying the facts. After 20 years it was discovered that his testimony was inconsistent, that DNA evidence did not point to Kristiansen and, above all, that the geolocator of his mobile phone placed him far from the lake when the events occurred.
a stolen life
The victim of this judicial error was released from prison in 2021 at the age of 43. “The case has had profoundly tragic consequences, in particular for Mr Kristiansen, who served more than 20 years in prison and was deprived of large parts of his life,” said Norway’s discal general, who has promised that an independent commission will investigate what happened. According to Kristiansen’s lawyer, his client could now claim compensation of about 30 million crowns, the equivalent of three million euros.