Oulu District Court starts hearings on Wednesday over what prosecutors say was two counts of attempted murder by a neo-Nazi at a shopping centre in Oulu city centre.
After stabbing the first child, Sebastian Lämsä, the defendant, then tried to attack a 14-year-old of foreign background. That child managed to escape unharmed.
Lämsä, who was born in 1990, is on trial for two counts of attempted murder.
They took place at the Valkea shopping centre in June. Police said at an early stage in the investigation that they suspected a racist motive for the crimes.
Lämsä’s lawyer, Heikki Aspegren, has said that his client denies having a racist motive. In remand hearings, Lämsä admitted the stabbings but denied his intent was to kill the victims.
The week after Lämsä's attack, there was a second stabbing in what police described as a copycat attack.
Nazi with violent crime convictions
Lämsä was a member of the banned neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement. He has previous convictions for serious violent crimes.
Lämsä was convicted of pepper-spraying Left Alliance politician Dan Koivulaakso at an Oulu pride event in July 2012.
He was also convicted of a stabbing at Jyväskylä's main library, which took place at the publication event for a book about the far right in Finland.
Yle’s sources say Lämsä is also suspected of involvement in another case.
The investigation is connected to the discovery in March 2021 of explosives at an Oulu post office. A package weighing two kilos and addressed to Lämsä had been delivered to the Posti outlet at Oulu’s Linnanmaa Prisma supermarket.
