Icelandic journalist and activist Kristinn Spence who has previously been in the news for having strong opinions on corruption and crime. Who also is known for criticising the Icelandic police for being easily influenced like the OECD report has reported previously.
Livestream Link:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=153280602998943&id=100049510...
Has said he has first hand experience of that and does feel unsafe in Iceland after reporting on it in detail. As Kristinn arrived in Iceland he was not allowed to take the standard quarantine like everyone else and the documents referring to him already having gotten the coronavirus and having antibodies were not taken as valid in Iceland according to police.
The police apparently took his quarantine paper and harassed him multiple times asking him to take the next flight out of Iceland or risk getting arrested. After denying to leave the country and asking the police what could be done then he got instructed he would be arrested if not out of country soon.
After a few hours police returned and arrested him violently and thew him to the ground and cuffed him proceeding to drag him through all of the Keflavik airport and witnesses and travelers looking shocked at the event. After this Kristinn said he was put in an unmarked car and driven off to an undisclosed location where no one was and thrown into a room and said to stay inside at all times.
Livestream link:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=153280602998943&id=100049510...
That was when Kristinn changed his quarantine registration online to the new location and got it confirmed from the directory of health and walked outside the room with his bag. There an unknown woman working for the red cross held him hostage in the stairs by blocking his exit and calling in some strange private security guards. That is when the livestream below started and he can be seen fighting with the police and the staff trying to detain him and end up holding him in the room.
Kristinn Spence has accused the Icelandic police of having a thorn in its side after he exposed a major breach in trust and that the police has tried everything to shut him up and cover up the breach that Kristinn has exposed in the past. After getting Corona virus in india and getting it verified from a blood test he traveled everywhere without needing to identify anything more than the documents showcasing that he actually was immune to the virus.
So it was especially strange he was picked out of a line of hundreds of people at the airport and arrested and thrown into an unmarked car and driven to a detainee house without any explanation except the police saying he had broken quarantine law. Kristinn says this is all a big sham and he even has emails where he contacted the justice department in March frightened and asking if he would return to Iceland if he would be detained for speaking out but he got no answer from the justice department.
The answer seems to be shown in the brute force he was met with when arriving in Iceland and shows the stance on how journalists who talk about cases that are hard on the country and police force are handled. Just a few months ago Kristinn got awarded a journalistic award for his work on difficult stories and for mediating information that was hard to come by and that he put himself on the line for.
The Courage in journalism award by a small knitted journalistic community and media mediators as a solidarity show for his reporting on tough no touch stories and for mediating information that helped with other stories. Kristinn Spence says he fears he will be imprisoned in the end for his journalistic work and questions where the authority will draw the line.
It seemed they could just arrest him on no grounds and hold him captive without any specific reason says his mother.
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Edward Lee
London, United Kingdom