A prosecutor has called for two young women charged with the axe murder last year of Hans Rickard Strømner to be jailed for 18 years.

• Women plotted grisly axe murder: prosecutor (10 Feb 12)

The women, aged 22 and 23, claim they acted in self-defence when they killed Strømner on July 10th last year.

His body was found three months later by two girls behind a shed in Oslo’s Klemetsrud district.

While prosecutor Bjørn Kristensen said he did not dispute the claim that Strømner had beaten his 22-year-old ex-girlfriend, he asked the court to treat with scepticism her account of the extent of the violence, newspaper Aftenposten reports.

“Both of them have demonstrably lied,” Kristensen told the court on the last day of the trial at Oslo district court. The two women initially told police they had nothing to do with Strømner’s death.

During the trial, several other women have also claimed to have been abused by the victim.

The two women on trial for murder deliberated for around a week before deciding how to kill the 23-year-old Strømner, the prosecutor has claimed. They considered poisoning him before settling on an axe, he said.

His now 22-year-old ex-girlfriend is charged with attacking Strømner’s upper body with an axe as he lay in bed at her home in Rustadsaga.

Her 23-year-old friend is accused of having helped her to dispose of the body by rolling it in a plastic covering and hiding it near an animal shelter in Klemetsrud.

A text message to a friend on July 9th last year was the last sign of life from Strømner.