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LASER MAN

‘Laser Man’ denied bid for early release

John Ausonius, better known as the ‘Laser Man’, will not be granted an early release from his lifetime prison sentence for a series of brutal attacks on immigrants, the Örebro District Court ruled on Friday.

'Laser Man' denied bid for early release

Ausonius, who was apprehended in June 1992, was sentenced to life in prison following a 1995 conviction for one case of murder and ten attempted murders of immigrants, as well as eight bank robberies.

He has been in prison for more than 20 years and Friday’s ruling marked the third time the court in Örebro in central Sweden has rejected his application for early release.

In its ruling, the court cited findings by the National Board of Forensic Medicine (Rättsmedicinalverket) that concluded earlier this year there was a “medium-high” risk that Ausonius would commit crimes in the future, an assessment the agency made in 2008 and 2010 during previous bids by Ausonius for early release.

According to the court, he still runs the risk of “sudden violent criminality which is likely tied to Ausonius’s autistic problems and personality disorders”.

Born in 1953, Wolfgang Zaugg was the son of German and Swiss immigrants. As an adult he changed his name to John Ausonius in order to appear more Swedish. He also dyed his black hair blond.

In 1979, he became a Swedish citizen. He combined a successful flirtation with stocks and bonds with a deep-seated hatred of immigrants.

Some ill-advised investments put a serious dent in his comfortable lifestyle and he began robbing banks to maintain his position.

At the end of the summer of 1991, Ausonius targeted his first immigrant victim. Two Eritreans saw a circle of red light on their friend’s body right before he was hit.

The man survived, but “Laser Man” terrorized Stockholm’s immigrant population for a further eighteen months.

In November 1991 he shot his fifth victim, Jimmy Ranjbar, an Iranian student. Ranjbar did not survive the attack.

In all Ausonius shot eleven immigrants in the Stockholm and Uppsala areas. Many of his victims were shot in the head and experts believe further casualties were only prevented by Ausonius’s incompetence when modifying his weapon.

Many experts have compared his crimes to those committed more recently by Malmö sniper Peter Mangs, who was found guilty in July 2012 of a series of attacks against immigrants in Malmö over several years that left three people dead.

TT/The Local/dl

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LASER MAN

‘Laser Man’ murderer starts prison blog

Convicted killer and serial sniper John Ausonius, who terrorized Stockholm in the early 1990s by attacking foreigners and immigrants, has started a blog about life on the inside, his fiancée, and starring in a Waiting for Godot-inspired prison play.

'Laser Man' murderer starts prison blog

With two entries to date, Ausonius, 59, opens his heart about his fiancée and wanting to meet her friends so they can come to grips with her “somewhat discussed choice of sweetheart”.

Ausonius, who was convicted in 1993 of one murder, but was also suspected of 11 attacks that earned him the nickname Laser Man (Lasermannen) because he used a laser on his rifle scope, was recently transferred from a high-security prison and there given the right to blog.

In his second post, he speaks about taking part in the play. He was told he could invite his fianceé’s friends to a prison play entitled Who will jump first?.

But prison officials revoked the decision one week before Ausonius went on stage.

On the blog, the decision prompted a few paragraphs questioning bureaucratic hiccups and “poor internal communication” between prison personnel.

A disappointed-sounding Ausonius wrote that social networks were important for inmates.

He then spent a few sentences discussing cutbacks to prison staff, saying inmates were let out of their cells an hour later in the morning following scaled-back staff in 2005.

Ausonius is serving a life sentence, which in Sweden can either be fixed-term or open-ended.

Convicted criminals with fixed-term life sentences must nowadays serve a minimum of two-thirds of the period before applying for parole.

No such guiding rule of thumb exists for open-ended life sentences.

Ausonius has unsuccessfully appealed to have his sentence converted to a fixed-term sentence three times, according to the newspaper Aftonbladet.

Visitors to his blog mostly left comments asking Ausonius to speak about how he felt about the racially-motivated crimes that he committed two decades ago.

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