Court hands down sentences in Vantaa kidnapping case linked to organized crime

Itä-Uudenmaan District Court on Friday sentenced several people involved in a March kidnapping in Vantaa, with the longest terms being 18 months of suspended imprisonment.

Two Irish men, aged 23 and 22, received the stiffest penalties for aggravated violation of domestic peace, deprivation of liberty, illegal threats, and attempted aggravated extortion. They held two men hostage in a private apartment in Martinlaakso, threatening to kill them if they tried to escape or use a phone.

A 25-year-old Estonian was sentenced to seven months of suspended imprisonment for aggravated violation of domestic peace and a firearms offense. An 18-year-old Estonian, who was 17 at the time of the crime, received five months of suspended imprisonment for the same charges.

Two others, aged 19 and 25, were fined. Some of the convicted were also ordered to pay compensation to the victims.

The crime was carried out on commission. According to the ruling, the perpetrators had arrived in Finland between late February and early March. Investigations of the Irish suspects’ phones revealed that one had received instructions via messages from individuals using pseudonyms, with promises of payment for carrying out the orders.

The original target was the underage younger brother of one of the hostages, who had previously fled abroad. The kidnappers demanded that the hostages call the underage brother, telling him they had been kidnapped and that he must pay or they would be killed.

After receiving the extortion call, the underage brother and an unidentified person contacted the police, who arrested three suspects the same day. The following day, two more suspects were apprehended—one had acted as a driver, and the other had been present in the apartment where the hostages were held.

A neighbor of the victim, who had opened the stairwell door for the perpetrators, was also charged. The neighbor claimed they had been pressured to do so.

The perpetrators stated that the underage target owed a debt to a Swedish criminal organization, allegedly for stealing 50 kilograms of amphetamine. The underage individual told police he had made a fake drug deal worth €15,000 and subsequently received a death threat from a Swedish gang called Dödspatrullen.