Finnish court orders Google to delete info about murderer

The High Administrative Court in Finland said on Friday it had ordered U.S. search engine operator Google to delete information about a man convicted of murder in the Nordic country.

In a decision published on Friday, the court specified two search results.

The first gave the man's name, his medical diagnosis, the verdict of his case, and the fact that he had been deemed in a mental investigation to have impaired responsibility.

The second link connected to a media contents service with parts of the information the man had been given a 10-year prison sentence, instead of a life sentence, due to his impaired responsibility.

The court ruled that in this case protection of privacy was more important than the "general interest".

In its defense, Google had claimed that people must have the right to know why the man had been given a more lenient verdict than usual for murder.

Google had refused to comply with the man's request. The issue had then gone to the Finnish data protection ombudsman and then two levels of court processing.

The decision by the Finnish high court was based on the ruling of the European Court in 2014 that people have the right to be forgotten.

The Finnish court further said the deletion of the search results does not restrict freedom of speech or societal debate.