THIS STORY WAS UPDATED
The Helsinki court of appeal* has increased Miro Pesonen’s involuntary manslaughter conviction to a nine-year prison term from five years previously and pay to the parents 10,000 euros for their suffering, according to Yle. Pesonen is a white Finn who stabbed Keyse Abdifatah Maalesh at Kannelmäki Helsinki railway station in April 2020.
The mother of the victim told Migrant Tales in December that she was not happy with Pesonen’s five-year prison sentence and that she had appealed the sentence.
Keyse Abdifatah Maalesh was stabbed and killed on April 26, 2020 at the Kanneläki train station of Helsinki. The police did not consider the death a hate crime. Source: Facebook
Two important questions remain unanswered from the case: Why the district court had sentenced Pesonen to five years, and what role did the police have in this.
Was it a hate crime?
The victim’s mother said that her son’s killer was intimidated by his dark skin and because he was tall physically.
“If a foreigner did something small [crime] at an R-Kiosk, a big commotion would emerge,” she said in December. “If a foreigner would have done what happened to my son, he’d receive a tough sentence and be deported from the country.
*Correction in the original story should read court of appeal, not district court. Thank you Ambrosius Wollstén.