Oulu District Court has found Juhani Sebastian Lämsä guilty on two charges of attempted murder in relation to a stabbing attack on two children at the Valkea Shopping Centre in the city last summer.
The 34-year-old — who has a history of neo-Nazi activity and a long list of convictions for violent crimes — stabbed and seriously wounded a 12-year-old child in the incident, before pursuing and attempting to stab a 14-year-old. Both children are of foreign background.
Despite being found guilty, Lämsä will not face a custodial sentence because a court-ordered psychological assessment previously found he was not criminally accountable at the time of the attack.
The psychological assessment was carried out by Finland's public health authority THL, and in the assessors' view Lämsä did not understand his actions or their consequences.
The court also ordered Lämsä to pay compensation of around 17,000 euros to the 12-year-old victim, about 6,500 to the 14-year-old, and a sum of around 1,000 euros to a shopping centre security guard.
No custodial sentence
During the trial, the court heard that Lämsä told police he thought he was being "watched" by some foreign intelligence agency. He believed that this intelligence agency operated technology that could read people's thoughts and even influence them to behave in a certain way.
His defence team argued that the attack was not premeditated, but was a spontaneous decision taken because Lämsä thought the two children knew something about him and were laughing at him.
Although the prosecution had called on the court to sentence Lämsä to 10 years in prison, arguing that the attack was racially-motivated, the results of the psychological assessment mean he will not face a custodial sentence. Instead, he will undergo involuntary treatment prescribed by THL.
History of violent offences
Yle has taken the decision to publish Lämsä's name because of his history of violent crime as well as his long association with the banned neo-Nazi group Nordic Resistance Movement.
These crimes include a conviction for pepper-spraying Left Alliance politician Dan Koivulaakso at an Oulu pride event in July 2012. He was also found guilty of a stabbing at Jyväskylä's main library, which took place at a publication event for a book about the far right in Finland.
Lämsä's attack on the two children was one of three racially-motivated stabbings in the city of Oulu in the space of a few weeks last year.
In December, a 15-year-old was found not criminally responsible for stabbing a man of foreign background at the same shopping centre in the city, which police said they believed was a "copycat" attack.