NORWAY: One Slight Mistake

Behind the closed doors of an Oslo courtroom, seven judges were trying Communist Asbjoern Sunde, a wartime resistance hero, for transmitting Norwegian military secrets, passports and police cards to the Russian embassy. The prosecution built a seemingly airtight case: eyewitnesses testified that they had seen Sunde hand over papers to a Soviet attaché at obscure rendezvous; Sunde’s sister-in-law and a friend acknowledged that he had asked them for their passports. But after two weeks of testimony, Sunde perked up and announced cockily: “I’ve been playing with the police, but now I’m tired. The only proof involves passports and false police identity cards. I can tell the court where the papers are.” If Sunde could produce the documents he was supposed to have given away to the Russians, the government’s case would collapse. Cops were dispatched to Sunde’s home. Sure enough, as he said, in an envelope stuck to an old cabinet they found passports, police cards and 240 kroner. Sunde smiled triumphantly.

But the police, playing a hunch, sent the kroner off to the national bank for a check of the serial numbers. Back came word that this series was put into circulation in March 1954. At that time, Sunde was already in jail. Now it was the prosecutor’s turn to laugh. As he reconstructed the affair, the Soviet embassy, anxious to help Comrade Sunde, had taken the passports and police cards he had given the Russian agent, had stuffed them into an envelope with the money, planted the lot in Sunde’s flat, and then sent him word of what they had done. But the comrades made one slight mistake: they forgot to enclose old kroner.

At that point Sunde paled, complained: “Somebody has fixed the notes.” Last week the court fixed Sunde: it found him guilty of espionage and treason, sentenced him to eight years in jail.