Two Finnish courts handed down sentences on Friday to members of extensive drug rings.
The District Court of Helsinki issued verdicts in a large drug case involving nearly 30 defendants, some of them connected to the Swedish gang known as Dödspatrullen.
The nine main defendants were convicted of importing and distributing narcotics. They were sentenced to 6–10 years in prison, with half a dozen of them slapped with the maximum sentence of 10 years.
Altogether 22 men, mostly in their 20s, were sentenced. They were found guilty of importing and distributing more than 100 kilograms of marijuana, more than 100 kilos of hashish, over 90 kilos of amphetamines, more than 15 kilos of cocaine, more than 150,000 MDMA (ecstasy) tablets and about a million tablets of alprazolam, also known as Xanax or Xalol.
The drugs were imported in 10 shipments. The first one was delivered by mail from Sweden to Finland, hidden in computer cases. The next nine batches were delivered by truck, driven from Sweden via Tornio to Hämeenlinna and the capital region.
The court found that the defendants has earned two million euros from their crimes, rather than the three million estimated by the prosecutor.
It also ruled that nine of the defendants committed crimes as part of an organised crime group, while the prosecutor had argued that 13 of them had done so.
The defendants included citizens of Sweden and Finland as well as Britain, Iraq, Norway, Kosovo, Serbia, Somalia, Turkey and Ukraine.
Oulu court sentences 12 in separate case
Also on Friday afternoon, Oulu district court has sentenced a dozen people to prison terms in another major drug case.
The court found that the criminal group had brought hundreds of kilograms of drugs from Sweden to Finland in 2022-23. The substances were distributed to other parts of Finland through Oulu.
Prosecutor Hannu Koistinen previously told Yle that the case represented an attempted by Swedish organised crime to gain a foothold in Oulu and the Finnish drug market more broadly.
Nineteen people were accused of taking part in the ring’s activities, including some who served as couriers or transferred illegal funds.
Most of the defendants were sentenced to long prison sentences, with one man in his late 20s sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison for nine serious drug crimes. Another man, in his early 40s, was handed an 11-year term for six serious drug crimes.
The others, including two women with Finnish names, were sentenced to terms ranging from about four to 10 and a half years in prison.
Alex Mohamed Al Khatib, born in 1983, who was sentenced earlier this week to 13 years in prison for numerous serious drug crimes, is considered to be the ringleader.
A dual citizen of Sweden and Palestine, he was arrested in Egypt earlier this year.
None of these judgments are legally binding yet, pending possible appeals.
