A Swedish lawyer has been convicted by a court in Halmstad for tampering with evidence by planting a deactivated firearm to help get his client acquitted in a shooting case.
Lawyer Peter Carlström was convicted by the Halmstad District Court for tampering with evidence relating to a shooting case between two criminal gangs in 2019 in which two men were shot several times.
Following the shooting and arrest of his client, Carlström is said to have exchanged a real firearm for a deactivated one in a basement storage room, which led to the acquittal of his client when police were unable to produce the real firearm, Swedish newspaper Expressen reports.
The actions of the lawyer, however, were not revealed until police were able to crack the encrypted messaging app Encrochat in 2020, which had been used by many gang criminals across Europe. the lawyer had used the app to communicate with his client and the pair had discussed the planting of the deactivated firearm.
Judge Joakim Hugoson only gave the lawyer a short, suspended sentence and fines, justifying this on grounds that Carlström will likely be disbarred from practising law for his actions.
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Carlström denied all of the charges against him and his lawyer, Lars Kruse, stated, said it was “a very worrying development when a defence lawyer is convicted on dialogue in a chat between two completely unknown people in which he himself does not participate.”
No testimony was heard from Carlström in the case as he invoked attorney-client privilege.
“He’s in a Catch-22 situation. Should he abandon the core subjects of lawyer ethics such as the duty of confidentiality and provide an explanation? Or should he uphold the core subjects of lawyer ethics and democracy and keep up the duty of confidentiality? My answer is simple: he has stood up for the core democratic subjects,” Kruse suggested.
The case comes after other Swedish lawyers representing criminal gang members were also accused of helping them by leaking confidential information about their cases.
Lawyers Ekrem Güngör and Amir Amdoun were accused of passing on information to members of the Vårby network, a Stockholm-based criminal gang that had been involved in the city’s drug trade for around a decade.
Both of the lawyers were also said to have used the encrypted EncroChat service to communicate with their clients.
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— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 12, 2022
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