Paolo Macchiarini is sentenced to prison for two years and six months.
The Svea Court of Appeal finds that the scandalous surgeon was guilty of three cases of serious assault.
– I regret that I trusted my bosses who gave me the green light, says Macchiarini at a press conference.
About a year ago, the district court sentenced Paolo Macchiarini to a suspended sentence for one count of grievous bodily harm.
On Wednesday, it was announced that the Svea Court of Appeal will change the verdict and sentence Paolo instead Macchiarini for three counts of aggravated assault to prison for two years and six months.
– We have found that these interventions have been carried out intentionally and that is what causes us to end up in serious assault and which means that there is also prison as a penalty, says Court of Appeals Councilor Maria Hölcke.
All died
It was during 2011 and 2012 that Macchiarini operated on synthetic tracheas on three seriously ill patients, according to a method he described as “groundbreaking”.
But neither the stem cells nor the larynx worked and the patients soon suffered serious complications – before all of them died.
The surgeon himself has always denied wrongdoing and claims that the operations on the three patients were done as a life-saving measure and that the implant was the only option for them.
Will appeal
On Wednesday afternoon, Macchiarini meets the media to comment on the Court of Appeal’s verdict, together with defense lawyer Björn Hurtig.
– We believe that the Court of Appeal makes an assessment that is not supported by the evidence, on the contrary, that it lacks support in the evidence. Paolo Macchiarini has had anything but intent to harm, says Björn Hurtig.
– Be sure that this judgment will be appealed. As Janne Andersson said yesterday: we have not given up, this match is not over, continues the lawyer.
“Didn’t expect this”
Macchiarini claims that the friends and relatives of the patients he treated have all thanked him for the operations, which he believes gave them the opportunity to live a little longer.
– Why am I here alone? Is there a reason I am solely responsible? Probably because I’m a foreigner. I did not expect this from a country like Sweden, says Macchiarini.
– My children ask me if I am a murderer.
That there has been a responsibility at Karolinska hospital has been established, explains TV4 Nyheternas Lennart Hultman-Boye, who followed the case for several years.
– But what has happened now is that the Court of Appeal has ruled in the case who is legally responsible for a crime, in this case serious assault. There it has not been considered that people in Karolinska’s management should be prosecuted for that crime, he says.