Jón brought the case after the Data Protection Authority requested information from the Central Bank of Iceland about how personal information on currency purchases was being dealt with; including how the information was processed, who had access to the information, how securely it was held and how long it would be held for.

In a Fréttablaðið interview in October, Jón said: “The Data Protection Authority allowed the Central Bank of Iceland to look at international transfers by credit card made by everyone in Iceland. That was done with no sort of minimum or provisos. I believe that that is a breach of my rights to permit unreasonable prying into my personal affairs.”

He added that he did not want “Big Brother” sticking its nose into all his business and said he would start proceedings against the governor of the Central Bank and other people to draw attention to the matter.

It is now clear that that will not happen — but it is clear, on the other hand, that Jón has to pay ISK 100,000 (EUR 617) to the Data Protection Authority in legal fees.

The woman is allowed to replace the man on the witness stand because the man has been dead since December. His death has nothing to do with the attack in Iceland, however.

The mother will be called upon to describe her son’s physical and mental condition after the attack and her testimony could affect the level of sentencing if the defendants are found guilty. Three men are accused of attacking the Greek tourist and all defendants appealed against the mother’s planned inclusion in the case, as she will be biased and consumed with grief. The three men deny all charges, DV reports.

The men are alleged to have attacked the man on Þingholtsstræti in May 2010, and later by the bar Sólon on Bankastræti. The three men are all between 27 and 33 years-old and deny the charges.

One man admits to having grabbed the tourist by the collar from behind and says that some sort of a scuffle took place, but denies having punched or kicked him. The other two claim to have no memory of the events and say they had no contact at all with the tourist, although other witnesses claim otherwise.

The men are said to have been partying at Hótel Þingholt on the 6th May 2010 and on their way out one of them went over to the Greek tourist, held an alcoholic drink towards him and offered him a sip. The man is said to have declined; but one of the accused is said to have continued pressuring the Greek man, eventually leading him to grab the glass and throw it on the floor. One of the defendants said it had been a mistake to provoke the man. It is not clear what happened next, but a fight apparently took place. After that the three defendants apparently got into a car alongside others. The tourist, in his anger, kicked the car. None of the accused has admitted to getting back out of the car and attacking the tourist again. But witnesses claim that three men fitting the defendants’ descriptions attacked the tourist with a barrage of hard punches and kicks. The man was left lying bleeding on the floor and the police and an ambulance were called, which took the tourist to hospital.

At least one of the defendants is connected to the Outlaws gang.

Several dead felines were also found in the garage, along with a small kitten that could only use its front legs.

Inspectors reported that most of the animals they came across stunk of urine and were malnourished or neglected in some way. The district court could not prove, however, that the couple intended to torment the cats.

The pair both denied the allegations, with the man claiming that most of the cats had been let into the house by visitors and did not belong to them. “It is drivel that we have owned 53 cats,” he allegedly told interrogators at the time.

“It was a serious offence,” prosecutor Ida Arnell told the Metro newspaper. She added that she was happy with the verdict, even though the couple only received probationary sentences and small fines. “Although it was a serious offence I didn’t really think that a prison sentence was necessary,” Arnell said.

Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen said two new experts, Terje Toerrisen and Agnar Aspaas, will look again at the mass killer’s mental stability to determine whether he can be held accountable for the 22nd July dual attacks which left 77 people dead.

Judge Arntzen stressed that the decision does not “imply any criticism of the initial experts” but that there is a “need to clarify the case as much as possible”. Breivik would be placed in psychiatric care rather than prison on the basis of the first evaluation.

Critics have questioned whether someone suffering from mental illness could plan such intricate attacks, while a team of experts monitoring Breivik last week said they do not believe him to be psychotic, schizophrenic or suicidal.

The 32 year-old right-wing extremist set a car bomb outside government offices in Oslo on 22nd July before going on a shooting spree at the ruling party’s youth camp on Utøya Island. Shortly before, he published a lengthy document online in which he claimed he was saving Norway and Europe from Muslim rule and multiculturalism.

Breivik, who is scheduled for trial on 16th April, admits the attacks but denies criminal guilt, claiming his actions were “necessary”. He has already said that he will not support a second assessment, which may make the work of the new panel more of a challenge.

Alþingi will this week debate an Independence Party proposal to cancel the criminal case being pursued against former Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde. It was decided in December that it would be legal to cancel the trial.

The Movement’s MPs are strongly against stopping the trial and want to see Geir punished for alleged wrongdoing in the lead up to the banking crash, and its aftermath. In fact they yesterday put forward a motion that the other three ministers who escaped trial should now be brought before the Landsdómur.

It was quickly decided that to do so would be illegal for two reasons: one because charges should have been brought against them within one year of the parliamentary committee’s election to investigate the so-called black report into the banking crash. It was that committee which proposed putting four former ministers on trial, but Alþingi members voted to let three of them off. That deadline passed two years ago; and a three year deadline to bring accusations against ministers also lapsed last October.

In response to the lack of parliamentarian-specific laws available, The Movement claimed that the three should now instead be prosecuted under general laws on the negligence of public sector employees.

The nine-week-old dog, whose body was found by pre-school children earlier in 2011, was badly beaten by the 22 year-old Stockholmer and finally suffocated with a plastic bag.

”As far as I know, a court has never before sentenced anyone to such a long term in prison for cruelty to animals in Sweden before,” prosecutor Jakob Holmberg told news agency TT.

The court heard how the man had bought the puppy as a companion but neglected it, locking it in his cellar and bathroom. When the animal got caught short, he became angry and beat it with its lead and his fists.

The puppy finally died when the man, who claimed he was upset and had taken his anger out on the dog, put a plastic bag over its head and wrapped a blanket around its body.

The prosecution called for the maximum punishment of two years in jail. ”It was very sadistically done,” Annika Oljeqvist of the south Stockholm police, told TV4 News at the time. ”If a human had been killed in a similar way, the prosecutor would have demanded 18 years or life in prison.”

The man was, however, only sentenced to 15 months behind bars; but the ruling is still believed to be the longest jail term ever handed down in the country for an animal cruelty offence.

The boy, who is now 16, was acquitted by Gothenburg District Court in August, but has now been found guilty by Western Sweden’s Court of Appeal.

The school’s principle reported the boy to the police after the IT department noticed that the teenager had downloaded at least 24 films from the internet and shared them with others online. He admitted to the charges, but claimed he was unaware his actions were illegal.

The appeals court, however, ruled that he must have been aware that it was “possible that his downloading covered copyright protected material that he couldn’t legally download”.

“When he, despite this, downloaded the films without finding out the particulars, he behaved with serious recklessness,” the court wrote in its ruling, according to the Göteborgs-Posten. “In this respect, he is guilty of committing a crime against the copyright law.”

The teenager has been ordered to pay a SEK 1,500 (EUR 167) fine, a relatively lenient sentence, as the downloads were deemed to be limited. The verdict has, however, been condemned by the Pirate Party, a political organisation which is pushing for copyright law reforms.

“The appeals court’s ruling means that hundreds of thousands of young Swedes are at risk of being dragged into court,” party leader Anna Troberg said in a statement. “This is not right. Today’s copyright laws are wrong in that they criminalise an entire generation of young people and throw a spanner in the works for new creators of culture that see technology’s possibilities.”

The lawyer for 42 year-old Harry Larsen said her client, who was found guilty of physically and sexually abusing the couple’s 10 children over many years, was pleased with the result of the appeal.

Larsen and his 37 year-old wife were both sentenced at Hjørring Municipal Court in June after their eldest 21 year-old daughter escaped from the house and told the authorities about abuse, exploitation and squalid conditions at their home. The court heard how the mother forced the girl to ‘dig her own grave’, while the father made her have sex with a horse.

“I know that he is very satisfied with getting a sentence with a specified length, so he has a concrete date which he can look forward to being released again,” Anne Mette Ovesen, Larsen’s lawyer, said in a Copenhagen Post report. The 42 year-old is only likely to serve another five years, however, due to parole and time already spent in jail.

Despite having her four-year sentence upheld, the mother will probably be released after serving just half. “The only thing I regret is that I ever let that man into my life,” she said when leaving the court. Journalists reported that the two children who attended the appeal hearing were seen hugging and joking with their mother.

Margrethe Sanning, the prosecutor, admitted that it was difficult to know what punishment Larsen deserved. “It’s satisfactory that he received a long sentence,” she said. “The decision to imprison someone indefinitely is typically used in cases where a person repeats a crime he has previously been convicted of.”

The 46 year-old has been convicted of two murders and six rapes in a campaign of terror which spooked the Copenhagen district for more than 23 years.

According to police, the ‘family man’ conspired with another rapist to smuggle his semen out of jail and spread it at the scene of a new rape to prove his innocence while incarcerated. With ‘million-to-one’ DNA evidence linking him to most of the crimes, Hansen apparently planned to prove that the perpetrator must have the exact genetic profile as him.

After six weeks of testimony from more than 50 witnesses, the jury at Copenhagen City Court found the father-of-two guilty on Monday. During his closing arguments last week, Hansen said himself that, “the person who did these things must be sick in the head, a psychopath who hates women,” but maintained he was not to blame.

As well as strong DNA evidence at several sites, an exact hand print at the scene of a rape in a university dormitory and a shoe print at the apartment of a murdered 73 year-old also pointed to Hansen. In addition, a distinctive heart-design condom from the same box found in Hansen’s kitchen was discovered 50 metres from another rape site. Several victims and family members testified against the former football coach and airport worker.

The only count Hansen was not convicted on was the sexual assault and near-strangulation of a woman in 2007. In this case, the DNA evidence was only a 2,200-to-one match to Hansen, and the victim could only identify him by his green Adidas trainers.

Össur Skarphéðinsson

The Icelandic foreign minister will take control of the country’s Icesave defence preparations at the EFTA court; despite loud calls from the opposition to keep the case in the hands of the business and commerce minister.

Össur Skarphéðinsson, Minister for Foreign Affairs, has been given political oversight of Iceland’s defence case being prepared after the EFTA decided to take the country to court over its handling of the failed Icesave accounts in the Netherlands and the UK. The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting today.

The decision has been widely discussed in recent days, including in Alþingi, among opposition parties and in the Alþingi foreign affairs committee — which itself voted to keep the case in the hands of Minister of Economic Affairs, Árni Páll Árnason; who was in charge of all things Icesave before the EFTA decided to take the matter to court last week.

The foreign affairs committee vote was won by the two Independence Party MPs, two Progressive Party MPs and one from the ruling Left Green Movement. Meanwhile the four remaining government committee members from the Social Democrats and the Left Greens voted to transfer the matter to the foreign minister. The Movememt’s Birgitta Jónsdóttir agreed with the government stance, but she only holds observer status. It was therefore 5-4.

The committee meeting last night was also attended by permanent secretaries from the Prime Ministry and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs; as well as an expert adviser in matters related to the EFTA court. They all agreed that the case belongs with Össur Skarphéðinsson.

The committee’s main concern when voting for Árni was that the EFTA court case should not be put in the same hands as the Icelandic European Union accession negotiations. Also the committee stated that all parties and members of Alþingi need to unite behind the minister in this case and the majority of its members felt that unifying minister should be Árni Páll Árnason.

The government was duty bound to consider the committee’s suggestion carefully, but eventually this morning decided to go with the non-political experts’ recommendation.