Appeals court doubles suspended sentence for assault and sex purchase

An Icelandic appeals court has doubled a man’s suspended sentence to 60 days for buying sex and assaulting a woman at a Reykjavík guesthouse in May 2023, mbl.is reported. He must also pay more than 2.4 million krónur in legal costs.

The man admitted paying the woman 30,000 krónur for sex and punching her repeatedly in the face. The blows left her unconscious and caused a cut and bruising around her right eye, injuries to her lip, mouth and head, and bruising on her left upper arm.

Reykjavík District Court had sentenced him to 30 days in prison, suspended. The man accepted his conviction for buying sex but appealed the assault conviction, arguing that he had acted in self-defence. Landsréttur, the appeals court, rejected that argument.

The incident happened on 7 May 2023. Police were called later that day about a lightly dressed woman in distress outside a guesthouse in eastern Reykjavík. She had visible injuries and a torn coat.

The man said an argument began after he asked the woman whether she was a man and demanded his money back. He claimed she took a metal object from a kitchen drawer, which he thought was a knife, and struck him in the face. He said he feared for his life and punched her until she lost consciousness before leaving the room.

The appeals court found the man’s account of the metal object too unclear to establish that it was a knife. No knife was found, although police officers said they had not specifically searched for one. The court also noted that the man first told the district court that a wound on his hand may have been caused by a knife; a doctor said it was unlikely to have been made by a blade.

The court found that he could have left the room after the woman attacked him without repeatedly punching her, so the conditions for self-defence were not met.

The woman, a foreign national, did not testify in either court. She is believed to be abroad, and repeated attempts to locate her have been unsuccessful.