The man was charged three months after the attack, but came into the police spotlight immediately after Zaniar Matapour had fired the fatal shots in the center of Oslo. Already on the same day that the attack took place, the 36-year-old was questioned for over two hours. The man has been in custody since September last year. On Monday, he was imprisoned for four new weeks. He pleads not guilty. The 36-year-old has not explained himself to the police after he was charged in the case. – Which means that the police use considerable capacity to clarify the issue of complicity in the terror on 25 June 2022, says police attorney Ingvild Myrold to news. COMPLEX INVESTIGATION: – A complex and comprehensive investigation is underway, where the police seek to shed light on all sides of the case, says police attorney Ingvild Myrold in the Oslo police district to news. Photo: Geir Olsen / NTB Until now, there has been little information about how the police believe the man contributed to the attack on 25 June last year. But in a ruling from the Oslo district court, a number of new details emerge: The gold coins One of the traces are gold coins found in the man’s home in Eastern Norway. In a closet, the police found a brand new shirt. Inside the shirt were several tubes of gold coins. The street value of the coins was over NOK 100,000. INVESTIGATED: Police outside the residence of the accused man. In the home, the police found a shirt with gold coins Photo: Olav Døvik / news The police also found remnants of paper in some of the pipes. On the paper remains, the police found DNA remains from the perpetrator Zaniar Matapour. news is informed that gold coins are valid currency in criminal circles. – Do the police have a theory that the weapons that Matapour had with him on 25 June were bought with gold coins? – For the sake of the investigation, we cannot state which hypotheses we link to the individual findings, police attorney Ingvild Myrold replies in an e-mail to news. Lawyer Øyvind Bratlien is the 36-year-old’s defender. He has so far not been available for an interview. DEFENDER: Lawyer Øyvind Bratlien is defending the man charged with complicity in terrorism. Photo: Law firm Bratilien Bratilien has previously argued that it is not surprising that Matapour’s DNA was found at the client’s home as the two are acquaintances. Matapour’s defender, lawyer Marius Oscar Dietrichson, tells news that he will not comment on the case now. He points out that the public prosecutor’s office will soon make a decision on whether charges will be brought against Matapour or not. Theory of weapon assistance When Matapour attacked two nightclubs in the center of Oslo, he was armed with two weapons: A pistol and an old MP40 submachine gun. MACHINE GUN: The MP40 is a German machine gun known, among other things, from the Second World War. Photo: Svalbard museum The machine gun can fire several shots per second, and the shooting could develop into one of the deadliest attacks in Europe in several years. After almost a year and a half of investigation, the police have yet to find out how Matapour obtained the weapons. However, the police have a theory that the 36-year-old may have been involved in obtaining them, according to the ruling from September. As news has previously told, the man was convicted in 2017 for having kept a weapon of type MP40. Arfan Bhatti was charged in the same case, but the case against him was dropped. The 36-year-old’s defender has pointed out that the police have been investigating the case for more than a year, without having found concrete information that the client has obtained weapons for the attack. Contact with Matapour and Bhatti When Matapour was arrested, he had several thousand in cash and a newly purchased, simple Alcatel mobile phone on him. Alcatel has models without apps, which means that the phone communicates less with base stations in the telecommunications network than a smartphone. This means that the phone leaves fewer traces and the user is more difficult to trace. A SIM card was stuck to the outside of the phone. On this SIM card there were two contacts: the 36-year-old and Arfan Bhatti. The police believe Bhatti was the mastermind behind the attack and that the 36-year-old was an accomplice. The police base this, among other things, on a chat an agent in the E-service had with a man the police believe is Arfan Bhatti. The agent pretended to be a leader in the terrorist group IS. In the chat, what the police believe to be Bhatti told about a “brother” who had helped in the attack, and that the brother had been questioned for three hours after the terror attack. The police believe the 36-year-old is this “brother”. They base this, among other things, on the fact that the 36-year-old was questioned shortly after the shooting, as something the police believe Bhatti is supposed to have told about in the chat. The 36-year-old had also planned a trip to Pakistan, which was also a topic in the chat. In the witness interview on 25 June, the 36-year-old explained that Matapour contacted him before the shooting and asked to borrow money. Traffic data shows that it was the 36-year-old who contacted Matapour, and not the other way around. According to the police, there was wider and more extensive contact between the two than what the 36-year-old has explained. The defense has told the court that it is not possible to know why Matapour had the 36-year-old’s phone number with him on the night of the terror, and that the chat never says who the “brother” is and what he is supposed to have done and known. The outfit Matapour wore black trousers during the attack. The trousers were bought at the same time as the shirt, the police later found tubes with gold coins in. NEW TROUSERS: Zaniar Matapour was captured by a surveillance camera inside Bunnpris, when he cycled past the shop. In the picture, he is wearing trousers that were ordered in an online store. A shirt that was ordered at the same time was found by the police in the home of the 36-year-old co-accused. Photo: news The shirt was found at the accused 36-year-old’s home. The clothes were ordered in an online store. Surveillance images from June 24 show that Matapour changed clothes sometime between 4 and 8.50 pm on Friday. Matapour put on his new trousers, and pulled a yellow T-shirt over the blue shirt he was pictured wearing earlier in the day. The Oslo District Court has assessed the grounds for suspicion against the 36-year-old. In the ruling, the judge writes that the suspicion against the man is strong. The judge believes there is a risk that he will destroy evidence if he is released.
ttn-69
Found gold coins in the shirt of the terrorist accused – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
