A Norwegian appeals court on Wednesday overturned the decision to provisionally release the son of the Crown Princess of Norway, Marius Borg Høiby, pending the verdict in a case of rape and violence of which he is accused.
On Monday, a trial judge ordered the release of the 29-year-old young man, in pre-trial detention since the beginning of February, to allow him to be with his mother, who is seriously ill.
The condition of Princess Mette-Marit, suffering from an incurable lung disease, has deteriorated significantly in recent months, to the point that doctors have placed her on the waiting list for a delicate lung transplant.
The decision to release Marius Borg Høiby having been appealed by the public prosecutor’s office, it was not implemented.
In its decision handed down on Wednesday, the Oslo Court of Appeal ruled that “there is still a high probability that Marius Borg Høiby will commit further offenses if he is released.”
Seeming not to want to make an exception, the judge also said she did not see “how the constraints suffered by Høiby in detention would be different from those of other pre-trial detainees with seriously ill parents or loved ones”.
“Extremely disappointed”
Asked by AFP, Marius Borg Høiby’s lawyers declared themselves “extremely disappointed”.
Saying they did not find any procedural or application of law errors, they will not appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
This means that Marius Borg Høiby, born from a relationship before his mother Mette-Marit’s marriage to Crown Prince Haakon in 2001, will remain behind bars until the verdict is delivered next Monday.
During his trial which took place from February 3 to March 19, he had to answer to 40 charges and rejected the most serious, namely four rapes against women who were not able to resist and repeated violence against an ex-partner.
The prosecution requested a sentence of seven years and seven months in prison for Marius Borg Høiby, who is not formally a member of the Norwegian Royal House.
The affair has tarnished the image of the Crown and adds to the scandal caused by revelations about the ongoing correspondence and sometimes intimate tone between Mette-Marit and the American sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein from 2011 to 2014.
