I initially hoped the trial would prove that Askerød supported me. That all the witnesses would follow the code of the streets and refrain from testifying because they knew that my heart had been in the right place.
However, during the hearings, five months later, between thirty and thirty-five witnesses came forward, and with a few exceptions, they all testified against me. I still felt like I had acted in self-defense, but the hearings turned into a weeklong testimony of a neighborhood that so strongly wished to dissociate itself from one of its own that people were willing to go against customs and culture and take the stand. In the past, regardless of how egregious my offense had been, I still managed to have people willing to see the good in me. It seemed that Samir’s stabbing was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
On September 7, 2000, the verdict was read. I was found guilty as charged in the stabbing of Samir Hosseini and sentenced to twenty-one months in a correctional facility.
I had almost killed my childhood friend, but I didn’t consider what I had done wrong. I only thought about escaping punishment.
Prison didn’t teach me anything good. Nobody came out a better person than they came in. The county jail had the capacity for only twelve inmates. I shared a roof with a man named Jimbo, some guys from Århus, and some others from Copenhagen. Yogi, Jimbo, and Afni were among the prisoners with the most influence, and they invited me to sit with them during meals.
The four-time convicted killer Peter Lundin was housed in the same facility. He was convicted of killing his own mother in the United States in 1992. After his release, he went to Denmark, where in 2000, he murdered his girlfriend and her two children and then dismembered them. He is now considered the most violent and disturbed criminal in recent Danish history.
In the summer of 2000, Peter hadn’t been convicted yet and was being held in isolation. The rest of the prisoners felt provoked by the ever-open door to his cell, which had a sign on it that said Not Guilty. We all agreed that he couldn’t go unpunished, and we got the sense that the guards felt the same way.
When Peter went to the gym, no one else was allowed in there. One day, he was working out, and as usual, he left the door open. The guards had insinuated that they wouldn’t interfere in the event we paid him a visit to teach him a lesson.
Jimbo was strong, Afni was extremely aggressive, Yogi was a six-feet-six behemoth, and then there’s me, Sleiman. We entered the gym, and Afni and I launched the attack. We kept hitting Peter while Jimbo and Yogi tried to force him to the ground, but no matter how hard we punched and pushed, he remained standing. He hardly seemed to acknowledge the punches we rained down on him, and he somehow managed to push both Yogi and Jimbo out the door. In all my years of street fights and skirmishes, I’ve met a lot of guys who could handle three or four opponents at once, but none of them were as strong as Peter was. The fight should have been over in two minutes. But five minutes later, he was still standing.
Eventually, the guards had to break it up ’cause it would have been bad publicity if Peter had died in their custody. After the assault, he was transferred to another facility. The police told the media that it was because the correctional officers were worried about other prisoners wanting to harm Peter.
In my prison, life went on as usual. My new comrades took over the marijuana trade from a local criminal. He was a declared racist and had White Power tattooed on his arms. Yogi, a guy they called Nicko, and me, gave him a serious beating. Since Jimbo wasn’t with the whole White Power business either, we were now free to dominate the prison drug market. In reality, this just meant that we now controlled White Power’s junkie. He was the one who smuggled in the weed by getting his friends to stash it in their prison wallets when they came to visit him. He also did the actual dealing and took all the risks while White Power just cashed in. The junkie was paid in protection, plus he was allowed to smoke as much weed as he wanted. We maintained the status quo, with the only new wrinkle being we now controlled the junkie and made all the money.
After six months in county jail, I was transferred to a state prison. I was only seventeen when the stabbing I was convicted of occurred, which was why I was moved to a low-security prison so soon. Once again, I expanded my network by befriending a group of immigrant guys from Copenhagen. Luckily, I was placed in a good wing of the facility. There, I was immediately invited to join the same dinner table as a man called Grandpa, who was one of the most powerful weed dealers in Denmark. I got to smoke joints, eat steak, and played soccer. There was no hierarchy among the prisoners and no need for extreme violence. I had a good time.
Anna was now able to visit me, and she wrote me three letters a day. She wrote one in the morning before she went to work, one around lunchtime, and a good-night letter telling me what she had been up to. She supported me all the way, and I left prison with a collection of four hundred letters. The only drawback was a lack of conjugal visits, and being Muslim, I refused to watch porn like the others did.
I also got smarter in prison. I had been caught several times now, and I realized that when I went away to jail, everybody lost. In prison, it was drilled into my head that there could be no witnesses to my crimes. As many times as I’ve been locked up, I was fortunate it wasn’t for much longer than the sentences that I got.