– This was a difficult case for the police. There were no immediate leads. No witnesses. Rachlew began her presentation with a photo of Birgitte Tengs. He said that he does it every time he has to give his lecture on interrogation techniques. Rachlew has been a pioneer in Norway in this area. Over 20 years ago, he went to England and got his first taste of the field. Today, Rachlew is a teacher at the Norwegian Police Academy and a researcher at the Institute for Human Rights at the University of Oslo. Interrogation methodology as a subject has become important in the training of new investigators. The last time he used his presentation with the image of Tengs was in Brazil just a few days ago. He took the court back to 1997. By then, almost two years had passed since Birgitte Tengs was killed. – Imagine working on a project for two years, and getting nowhere, with pressure from all over Norway that you must clear up this matter. Then a solution becomes very attractive, Rachlew began. news has previously written more about the interrogation methods used against the cousin: This photo of Birgitte Tengs is used by Asbjørn Rachlew in his lectures. 1 in 5 judicial murders contained false confessions The interrogation expert had two tasks ahead of this trial. Explain the development of interrogation techniques in Norway, and what international literature says about false confessions. And a professional assessment of the interrogation situation and the interrogation techniques used in the interrogations by the cousin. Rachlew began by pointing to several examples of methods that had been experienced and continued by 90s investigators. Methods that did not come from training and literature, but from experience. Several of these “teachings” came from the interrogator of the cousin. The interrogations were led by Stian Elle. He was known to be the best in the field, and a highly respected colleague of Rachlew. “Each investigator has his own individual style of conducting interviews. There are a number of different paths to take during an interrogation, and the strange thing is that many will lead to the goal – the confession”. Rachlew read these sentences from an internal memo. He gradually got into literature and findings from the American “Innocense project”. An analysis of 362 cases in which innocent people have ended up in prison in the United States found that 22 percent contained false confessions. With young accused, the proportion was even higher. – Another problem is that false confessions have a sinister tendency to corrupt other evidence, Rachlew said. And drew the lines of the cousin. “The film script” Early in February 1997, the cousin was arrested. Rachlew singled out the period 17 February to 20 March as a particularly critical method. The cousin was questioned for over 200 hours, without a defense attorney present. Rachlew called it interrogations, although they were little formalized. It was not recorded, nor was audio or video recorded. They were called “informal” conversations. It was the cousin and Elle alone. The basis for everything that has been written and said about what happened has come from Elle’s notes. They were not intended to be presented, but in the appeal court case against the cousin, they were presented. It emerged that the cousin was isolated, refused to read school books and watch football matches. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, he was broken down. Both mentally and physically. Rachlew said that he had read that his cousin had nightmares about Birgitte Teng’s headless ghost coming out of the wall. Then he was told: “It will continue like this until he starts to explain himself”. – But he explained himself all the time! He was not unwilling to explain himself at all. But he didn’t explain himself the way the police wanted, Rachlew said. Elle wrote in the notes: “I expect that the nightmares will continue to appear.” – This was part of the strategy, Rachlew said. Eventually, the cousin was told that no one believed him, and that the parents had abandoned the explanation that gave him an alibi. Asbjørn Rachlew believes that this was not true. The cousin started getting homework. He was interrogated all day, then he was told to make a “film script” about the murder at night. Rachlew describes the script as a kind of romantic short story at the beginning. Elle eventually took part in shaping the script. And the imagined main character was replaced with the cousin himself. One night he wrote the confession. – I write “confession” with an emoticon. Because there was no confession, said Rachlew in Haugaland and Sunnhordland district court on Tuesday. Butchered psychiatrist Rachlew also spent a lot of time criticizing the work of the Swedish psychiatrist Ulf Åsgård. In connection with the cousin’s arrest, he had created a perpetrator profile in which the cousin was described as a “deviant”. He thought that when his cousin said he was tired, he was really angry. Angry that he hadn’t gotten a lady the night Birgitte Tengs was last alive. Rachlew believed that this had no basis in any research. – It is difficult to take this seriously. It was and is a chapter of grief. Unfortunately, he (Ulf Åsgård, editor’s note) was summoned, and he was supposed to start his assignments by helping my colleagues with how to interrogate the cousin. He brought in the same pseudoscientific elements that contributed to the conviction of Thomas Quick. Rachlew drew the lines on to the Birgitte Tengs case. – Unfortunately, he was considered an expert and took the role of an expert. He told the interrogators how to interrogate the cousin to get him to confess. When he later became an expert, he had to defend the work he himself had helped design. The interrogation expert also explained that it was the psychiatrist who came up with the “displacement theory” when the cousin said he did not remember the murder. Rachlew talked about what he described as outright lies and leading questions. When the cousin asked early on: “You think I did it, you?”, Elle replied: “Yes, and I can prove it.” He was asked questions such as: “How do you see that constantly new information might speak against you?”. The cousin’s role in today’s trial It wasn’t until the week before the trial against the 52-year-old who is currently charged, that the cousin was completely cleared of the murder of Birgitte Tengs. The compensation judgment against him was then annulled. The cousin retracted his confession a few months after the interrogations with Elle. But since there has previously been a confession from someone other than the 52-year-old man who is currently on the dock, the cousin’s story has become part of the trial that is ongoing in Haugaland and Sunnhordland District Court. He is scheduled to testify in court next week himself. Today, however, Dagbladet reported that the cousin is considering retiring, via his lawyer Arvid Sjødin. – He is not interested in sitting like a goat and accepting accusations. But he has to see what comes up, says the lawyer to the newspaper. The cousin’s lawyer, Arvid Sjødin, has been critical of how the cousin’s case has been discussed in the ongoing trial. Photo: Josef Benoni Ness Tveit / news The police and the prosecution have emphasized on several occasions that the cousin has not been part of the new investigation. About his confession in 1997, Rachlew could summarize today by saying: – I have analyzed several false confessions, and am surprised that he did not crack earlier. Nor am I the first to have concluded that. Birgitte Tengs was found murdered on 6 May 1995. A 52-year-old man from Karmøy is now charged in the Tengs case, and the trial begins on Monday 7 November 2022.
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Asbjørn Rachlew slaughtered the interrogations of his cousin – news Rogaland – Local news, TV and radio
