Here`s the best summary of the murder-case available online , to be found at the ultimate Dissection-source
http://dissection.lostkingdom.net/ Check this site. It SLAYS!!!!
---------------------
The Murder (July 22 1997 to July 29 1997):
It all began on the early Tuesday morning of July 22 1997. Jon and his friend Vlad (Also known as Nemesis), had been out partying for 2 days and had also taken amphetamin. They were on the way home from a pornclub, when they met Josef Ben Meddour, a 37 (or 36) years old algerian man who had lived in Sweden for about 10 years. They started to talk and he accompanied them. It turned out that Josef was gay, and he touched Jon's hair and said it was beautiful. Jon didn`t like this, but instead of asking him to leave they asked him to follow them to Jon´s apartment. At first, Josef didn´t want to, but after a while he hesitatively joined them. When they arrived at Jon´s place, Vlad waited outside together with Josef, while Jon went up to get some beer. That was of course just what he said. He did get beer, but his real intention was to fetch a gun and an electrical shockweapon. Later in the trial, they said they "wanted to teach him a lesson". Together with Josef, they then walked up to the watertower on Ramberget (The Ram mountain) in Keillers Park, not far away from Jon's home. Once up there, they watched the view over Gothenburg. Then Jon took out the shockweapon behind Josef's back, and gave him a shock in the neck. It was meant to paralyse him, but it didn´t. That could be a reason why they ended up killing him.
Instead of getting paralysed, Josef started to run away. Jon threw the gun to Vlad, who fired the first shot, and hit Josef in the back. He fell down and rolled a few meters. When he stopped, Jon took the gun and shot Josef in the neck. Then they ran away.
- Note - This is, of course, not anything I know for sure. I guess no one except Jon and Vlad knows how it really happened, but the police' reconstruction of the murder looked like that.
Josef was found by a 16 year old boy on the early evening the day after the murder. In the beginning, the police didn´t have any clues about it, but they arrested Josef's old boyfriend, a 44 years old man from Sweden, on the Thursday, 2 days after the murder. Though they kept it as a secret until Monday 28th, 6 days after the murder, when they took him into custody. But after a couple of days, they had to release him because of not enough evidence. He later got 15000 SEK (about $1500) for damages, because of "sufferings during the arrest" or something like that.
5 months passed and both Jon and Vlad lived normal lives. Jon went on a minitour in Germany with DISSECTION and played in Wacken in the beginning of August, only 2 weeks after the murder! Vlad got in touch with a girl from Stockholm, who also was a satanist. They got together and he invited her to join his and Jon's satanic order; "The Misantrophic Lucifer Order" (MLO). This girl was the reason why Jon and Vlad got arrested in December that year.
The Arrest (November 31 1997 to January 3 1998):
Vlad lived in Angered in Gothenburg from the beginning, but he moved to the suburb Norsborg outside Stockholm on the 31th of November. But after 2 weeks his girlfriend reported him to the police because he had beaten her up. She also told them that Vlad had bragged about the murder of Josef.
"We killed that fag!", he had said when they walked past a placard about it.
So on Monday the 15th of December, the police arrested Vlad in his apartment in Norsborg. When they arrested him, he was on his way out and had a gun on him. The same gun which Josef had been shot with. Though he didn´t make so much resistant (if any) during the arrest. When they then searched his apartment they found a sacrifice room, an altar and some other things. They also found pieces of hair, bones from humans, a bottle with human blood, obduction movies and a 200 years old human cranium, which had been stolen from a grave.
Vlad had also assaulted 3 persons, in the end of June, when HAMMEFALL had the releaseparty for their first album in the club "Down Under" in Gothenburg. He had hit one woman and one man in the face and kicked another man in the face. He had also put his friends in a line and shouted: "Sieg Heil! Shall we kill people!?".
Therefore they brought him into custody on the Thursday 18th of December, suspected for:
- Assault and threat on his girlfriend.
- Illegal possession of weapon.
- Three cases of assault in the summer.
- Grave robbery.
- The murder of Josef Ben Meddour.
- The murder of the 16 years old girl Malin Olsson who was found killed in a cemetary in the late summer of 1994.
(Could be even more...or less)
The same day they brought Vlad into custody, the police arrested Jon in his apartment in Gothenburg, accused for murder and illegal possession of weapon. Both of them denied any crime, but were kept in custody.
The Trial (April 28 1998 to September 25 1998):
On the Tuesday 28th of April 1998, the prosecutor pressed charges against Vlad and Jon. Vlad entered the courtroom with all black clothes, pentagram necklaces, long black hair and MC boots. Jon, though, had change his style completly. He had cut his hair and had ordinary clothes. He looked like any other person in the room.
They blamed eachothers for shooting Josef, so nobody knows exactly who did it. Vlad´s girlfriend, who was about 5 months pregnant with his child, first told the jury, when she testified against him and Jon, a different story than she has said to policemen in 3 different inquiries. She said that Vlad had paralysed Josef with the shock gun after which Jon had taken out the gun and shot him twice in the back. But after a while, the prosecutor got her to go back to her old story, which was that Vlad first shot Josef in the back and then gave the gun to Jon who shot him in the neck.
The trial continued until Monday the 6th of July 1998, when they got their punishments.
The court was sure that Vlad fired the first bullet at Josef and he was therefore - despite his denial - covicted for murder. That would have normally given him a lifetime in jail, but since he only was 20 when he shot Josef he got 10 years in jail instead. If he had been 21, he would indeed got lifetime.
The court choosed to believe in the story Jon told them, because he told them things that weren´t to his advantage. And that's lucky for him, because therefore he was only convicted for assistance in the murder. He was considered to have assisted just a little bit, so he only got 8 years in prison, instead of lifetime, which is the ordinary penalty for assistance in murder.
But 20 days later, on Friday the 26th of July, Jon's penalty was increased with 2 years. So his final sentence was, just as Vlad's, 10 years in prison. He was put in the prison in Tidaholm, but has since then been transfered first to the Kalmar prison, and then to one in åkersberga, called "Österåkers anstalten", where he is being held now.
Epilogue:
So, now I´ve finally written this damn story down, and I hope it has helped you guys out there. At least by silencing your curiosity. It took some long hours for me to find all the articles and then read them to get a picture of it and then write it down with as much facts as possible, so I really hope it's worth the time.
I am not 100% sure that this is exactly what happened, and I take no responsibility for any missleading facts. Of course, I´ve tried to make it as true as possible, but some articles says different things, and some newspaper even writes untrue stuff. But based upon around 50 artciles, and a TV show about the murder, this is what I´ve managed to put together.
But even if it is isn't fully true, it should at least help you from having to believe in all those rumours out there. Like on the old Dissection page on A Land Forlorn, where it said that Jon posted bail and finished an album. That is NOT true. Simply because there is no such thing as posting bail here in Sweden.
The stuff about that they killed Josef because he wanted to know everything about satanism, I´m not sure about. I haven´t read anything about that in any newspaper (or the TV show), but it could be true.
Anyway, Jon will probably be out in autumn 2004, according to his brother. I´ve heard he has access to a stereo, a guitar, some sort of studio and maybe even a computer. He is composing some songs, but if they are for DISSECTION, probably noone except he knows, as well as with the question if he wants to restart the band again. Peter has said that at least he wants to, so maybe it´s a possibility! Let's hope it will happen!
Written by Jonas Håkansson, in August 2000 (with stuff added from time to time).
Copyright © Jonas Håkansson. If you want to use this story on another site, then first contact him on
lordardor@hotmail.com or ICQ# 32595770. -
http://www.dissection.tk
