Obituary

Mwalami Mtumbi, son of Mzee, brother of Adija and Bahati, went away yesterday. He became 14. How he perished or if he was content up to that moment, I do not know.

If I knew him at all, I would say he smiled all the way until the afterworld swallowed his dear memory. He was my hero, my very best friend and pride of my life. He was a funny boy who gave me great company, who listened rapt and attent, who taught me more than I could teach him. He was a student, a child never before gone to school. He who wanted so much to learn that he got everything needed to read and write and do the math quickly within three months. He showed me the monkeys, how they also wanted to play. Then we learned how to shoot straight with the bow and arrow to scare those who stole our food. Swimming lessons and sports. It is not possible to think of him without the smile popping through.

Honoured I am for having known him. I miss him. I am sad I did not get to see him again. It must not be to late to meet his family once more though. I had more friends amongst the Mtumbis than anyone can wish for. Mwalami was a very special person and I hope he lived well. Life can be cruel, but hopefully not all the way. I know those good memories I have of him and I am conviced he must have many a good moment, those moments that never fade, never becoming anything less than a feeling of utter content. Life, hope and faith. A memory lives forever.

M&Ms for facilitators

Now that Edvard Munchs paintings Scream and Madonna are recovered, absolutely not sitting with a filthy rich collector in some secluded room, M&M will have to pay out the promised reward of two million M&Ms. That's a whole lot of candy. Two metric tons actually.

David Toska, as we well remember, was one of the robbers at NOKAS in Stavanger, April 5th 2004. While the police now was in the midst of the most prolonged and extensive hunt ever, Munchs paintings were stolen by some cannonfodder August 22th 2004. The police quickly caught on, or not, and all hope seemed lost after just a couple of links. He was caught, or rather called home and surrendered himself, April 5th 2005. Convicted, he has also started talking about the network of lies, deceptions and power implicit in the robbery of Munchs paintings. If not, he has at least been dropping subtle hints through connections having ties to some reporter or the other, as his face has featured with such information now and then the last two years.

Also during the two years which has passed since the NOKAS, certain coercive tactics by the police have been disclosed to great embarrassment

On wiki I attempted to be very factual. As I don't know if that text will be there or not in a day or two in its current form, I cite it:

In 1996 he was arrested for carrying a loaded weapon in a bar in Oslo. When the police searched his home they found an MP5 sub-machine gun, explosives and tools for committing robberies. He is considered the mastermind behind the break-in at Norsk Medisinaldepot (2000), the safe-deposit box robbery at Bryn (2001), the commando-style robbery of Postens brevsentral October 27th 2003 and the NOKAS robbery April 5th 2004.

He admitted his involvement in the deposit robbery at Bryn and the Medicinal Depot, was committed, but later acquitted because of questionable motives and plausible coercion by the police. Emptying the bank boxes in 2001 brought out approximately 3 million USD, or about 20 million Norwegian Kroner in values. A security employee, by the order of the police, fed Toska with information, and so the police was said to make possible and facilitate both robberies.

The NOKAS robbery is probably the gravest example of hardened criminal activity in Norway. Never before has such brutality been evident on such a scale. The robbers got away with approximately 56 million NOK. Following the robbery the police started the most extensive investigation in modern times and focused all their forces on unraveling a hornets nest of suspected syndicate crime. Edvard Munchs paintings Scream and Madonna were stolen August 22th 2004 by three no-ones. All clues as to whom might have ordered the theft seemed to run dry after a few links and hints. Toska was arrested in Spain on April 5th 2005.

In the NOKAS-trial against Toska he and his accomplices confessed to participation in the robbery, but not to the killing. On March 5th 2006 Toska was sentenced to 19 years in prison. August 30 2006 Munchs paintings returned almost unscathed. Police refuses to say a word about where they found the paintings, nor whom they might suspect. No arrests were said to be made or any reward for tips having been paid. M&M however, pledged to pay out 40.000 bags of itself to whomever might have facilitated the rescue of Munchs paintings. Toskas face once more dove into the limelight.

The intricacy of this life of crime might explain his prominence in the media.

Please be aware that some of the information in that article was put there by fellow wikipedians. Most of the form is mine. Every date is verifiable.

More M&Ms to come?

Of course. There are circumstantial, even hard evidence of Toska being under the surveillance of the police in one way or the other since at least 2000. As in This is revolution a whole network has been threathened. Who might comprise that network is what is interesting, as surely it includes at the very least a few rotten apples within the police, or simply subterfuge. That is not conspiracy, that is just planning forward. We come well prepared with the few prominent examples of disclosed crime we have - first there was Treholt, pure espionage. Then came white collar criminals, pyramids, fraud and outright con-men. None high profile, but a few prominent hints into a deceptive net. Then violence erupted and Toska came down as first the devil and then a moderator.

Well, he might be a changed man, but boy, what have our police come to when they have known him, intimately, for the last 10 years? Without managing to take him down. I effin' don't believe it.

Politiet uttrykker i pressemelding 04.09.2006:
Politiet har ikke inngått noen avtale med Toska hva angår de forhold som er omtalt i pressemeldingen.