Oulu District Court has dismissed the charge of attempted murder against a 15-year-old over the stabbing attack on a man of foreign background at a shopping centre in the city in June.
The court ruled instead that the teenage defendant was guilty of attempted manslaughter committed as a criminally unaccountable young person, citing a lack of evidence presented in the case that the act was deliberately premeditated.
During the trial, the prosecutor in the case had presented evidence to the court that the teenager had searched online for information about the Finnish legal system, including sentences handed down to young people.
His search history also showed he had researched far-right ideologies. At the time of the attack, he was wearing a shirt displaying a Nazi slogan in German and his knife had a swastika symbol on it.
In addition, the prosecutor showed the court conversations the defendant had on online forums, in which he discussed committing an act of violence against a person of foreign background — just weeks before the attack at the shopping centre.
Despite this evidence, the court ruled that it could not be inferred that the defendant had made a decision to commit murder before the attack nor did the prosecution prove that he had a detailed plan to carry out such an act.
The teenage defendant had himself admitted to police that the attack was racially-motivated and that he had intended to cause injury to the victim. However, he denied he wanted to kill the man.
Based on the results of a psychological assessment, the court ruled that the defendant was criminally unaccountable at the time of the attack and he will therefore not be sentenced. Since taking the assessment, the defendant has been involuntarily undergoing treatment prescribed by Finland's public health authority THL.
The incident was one of three separate stabbing attacks on people of foreign background in the city over the space of a few weeks.
The week before this incident, a 33-year-old man steeped in far-right activism had attacked two foreign background children, also at the Valkea shopping centre, first stabbing a 12-year-old and then chasing a 15-year-old, trying to stab him too.
In September, a high school student of immigrant background was attacked in broad daylight, suffered life-threatening injuries. The trial in that case began on Monday 16 December.
