Reykjavik courthouse - me too

The Icelandic super group, Baugur, was taken to court this week.

It is a fairly new building, once a bank, and the interior is a well balanced design of institutional glass, iron, wood, space and no entry doors. It is bright and the window let the daylight, the symbol of justice, stream into the entry hall. On first floor, ground floor in English, is the main courtroom, on second floor are few more smaller once.

I have once been taken to court, and that was I believe an unconventional affair. It was in one of the small court rooms upstairs at Reykjavik courthouse, and I was prosecuted by the Reykjavik police.

In short, the case was build on a mild car accident 17 months earlier, no one injured, and usually such mishaps are sorted out “on location” in half an’hour. The details of this are not important, just a small accident, perhaps an everyday accident. But for some reason, I was taken to court, and informed about it few months after the accident. The case seemed strange, weak and bizarre, so I didn’t bother though it might mean I had to pay thousands of pounds and have my reputation generally scattered. Didn’t bother because there was some obscure motivation behind it, and I wasn’t interested. I didn’t fight it.

The prosecutor prepared it well, with photos and reports and bunch of witnesses, coming from somewhere I don’t know. But I was accused, e.g., for drink-driving, though I wasn’t driving nor a blood-test was ever taken.

Shortly after the drama begun in the court room, the prosecutor’s key witness arrived and said something like this to the judge, “well, since I am here in front of you, I feel I have to tell the truth. But the police told me to tell these lies about him” (me).

The case was folded and the judge and the prosecutor disappeared into a room at the back. The judge did seem a kind man and upset about this unusual thing in his court, as they left. I heard someone raise his voice, but I left the building and got on with my own business.

Some years later, when I was told about unusual behaviour by lawyers and official within the state departments, by someone who asked me to make a documentary about it, I thought about my own case and contacted the courtroom. I asked for the transcript from the trial, my trial, and got it, but the end dialogue was missing. There was no key witness, arranged by Reykjavik police department, that said “well, since I am here in front of you, I feel I have to tell the truth…..”.

When I later told the lawyer who handled the case for me, that “well, since I am here in front of you….”, sentence was missing from the transcript, he told me that the court sound records all trials and the recoding should be available.

I asked the assistant at the court about the recording, who said she would check it out and let me know, but sometimes they are deleted, she said. “Sometimes why”? I asked. She said she would let me know, come back to me and inform me about the case, that was part of her job description. But I never heard from her.

Now, did someone delete the recording, or was it just one of those mishaps, got lost. But how extraordinary. Maybe someone can tell me what was really going on.