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CRIME

Swedish spy scandal: Two brothers jailed for passing secrets to Russia

A Swedish court has locked a Swedish-Iranian man up for life – and sentenced his brother to almost ten years in jail – in what's been described as the most serious spy scandal in modern Swedish history.

Swedish spy scandal: Two brothers jailed for passing secrets to Russia
The Russian Embassy in Stockholm. Photo: Tim Aro/TT

Stockholm District Court on Thursday sentenced Peyman Kia, 42, to life in jail and his brother Payam Kia, 35, to nine years and ten months for aggravated espionage.

Peyman Kia is a former intelligence official who worked for Sweden’s security police, Säpo, as well as the Swedish Armed Forces and their military intelligence service, Must, for years.

The brothers had “together and in concertation, illegally and for the benefit of Russia and the GRU, acquired, transmitted and disclosed information whose disclosure to a foreign power could harm Sweden’s security”.

The court found Peyman Kia guilty of gathering some 90 classified documents through his jobs.

His brother was meanwhile found guilty of planning the crime and managing contacts with the GRU, passing on about 45 of the classified documents.

They were arrested in 2021, several years after Säpo first suspected a mole in its organisation and counter-intelligence began investigating Peyman Kia.

The pair have been held in custody since their arrest. Both denied the charges.

Peyman Kia was handed a life sentence for carrying out espionage “of the most serious category”, judge Måns Wigén said, adding that he had taken advantage of his employment as an intelligence official to aid Russia.

“Russia is the biggest threat to Sweden’s security. As far as foreign power go, acts of espionage to help Russia must therefore be considered as the most serious,” states the court judgment, seen by The Local.

Despite a trove of evidence including USB sticks, laptops, hard discs and mobile phones, the court acknowledged that there was much it had not been able to ascertain.

“After studying the evidence, it is clear that some pieces of the puzzle are missing and it has therefore not been possible to establish with certainty what has happened”, it wrote in a statement.

Possible money motive

The court speculated that the brothers may have been motivated by money.

Among other things, it found that Peyman Kia handled cash worth around 550,000 kronor (almost $50,000) in 2016-2017, more than 80 percent of it in US dollars, which it said was likely payment from Russia for the classified documents.

Much of the investigation and court hearing, and Thursday’s full court ruling, was considered classified information and therefore not made available to the public.

The trial coincides with another spectacular spying case believed to have benefited Russia involving a couple of Russian origin arrested last year at their home in a Stockholm suburb in a police helicopter raid at dawn.

Moscow allegedly installed the couple, named by the Bellingcat investigative website as Sergei Skvortsov and Elena Koulkova, as sleeper agents in the late 1990s.

According to Swedish media, the pair managed specialist import-export companies dealing in electronic components and industrial technology.

Skvortsov was placed in temporary custody in November for “illegal intelligence activities” while his companion was detained on suspicion of complicity before being released although she remains a person of interest in the investigation.

Swedish authorities say the case is not linked to that of the Kia brothers.

Article by AFP’s Pia Ohlin, with quote from court judgment added by The Local

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CRIME

Sweden’s ‘snippa’ rape case to go to the High Court

When Sweden's appeals court threw out a guilty verdict in a child rape case over the meaning of 'snippa', a child's word for a vagina, it caused a scandal in Sweden. Now, the Swedish Supreme Court wants to hear from the Court of Appeals about its decision.  

Sweden's 'snippa' rape case to go to the High Court

Attorney General Petra Lundh criticised the appeals court for “a number of serious miscarriages of justice” in the way it dealt with the case. 

The man had been sentenced to three years imprisonment in 2021 after the district court heard how he, in the prosecutor’s words, had “by sticking his hand inside the plaintiff’s shorts and underwear, holding his hand on the the girl’s ‘snippa’ and having a finger inside her ‘snippa’, performed a sexual act” on her. 

The girl’s testimony was found to be credible, in part because she had told her mother about the incident on their way home.

But in February this year, the appeals court threw out the conviction, arguing that it was unclear what the girl means by the word snippa, a word taught to Swedish children to refer to female genitalia.

Despite agreeing with the district court that the man had touched the girl between her legs and inserted his finger into her snippa, the court found that it could not be determined whether the girl was referring to her vulva or to her vagina.

If the man had inserted his finger into her vagina, that would have met the standard to be classified as rape. Because the girl said that his finger was “far in”, but could not state exactly how far, the appeals court found that it could not establish beyond doubt that the man had inserted his finger in her vagina and not her the vulva.

Because no lower-grade charges, such as sexual abuse or molestation, had been filed against the man, the appeals court could not consider other offences.

This week, the Attorney General lodged a complaint with the Supreme Court against the appeal court’s decision. Now the Swedish Supreme Court has given the appeals court until April 12 to explain its decision-making in the case.

The Supreme Court has not decided whether it will hear an appeal against the decision to clear the man of rape charges.

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