The Helsinki district court found Nooralhooda Al-Janabi and her former husband Qahtan Ghawi Hussein guilty of aggravated fraud and forgery, tricking judges in Finland and Strasbourg into believing that Al-Janabi's father was killed in Baghdad a month after his asylum claim in Finland was refused.

Yet the facts on which the complaints were based were "entirely false," backed up with forged documents from Iraq, the court ruling, seen by AFP, said.

The presumed death had sweeping implications for Finland, which in November 2019 was ordered by judges at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg to pay the family 20,000 euros ($23,700) in compensation for violating the man's human rights.

The pair's actions "not only caused economic damage to the Finnish state, but also significant negative publicity" the judgement said, as Finland was seen to have violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights for the first time.

Al-Janabi, 24, was sentenced to 22 months' imprisonment and Hussein, aged 37, to 23 months, although the year both have already spent in custody will be deducted, judges wrote.

The prosecution argued that the defendants managed to secure a residence permit for Al-Janabi and the pair's child by claiming that the woman's father had been murdered in December 2017, just days after he voluntarily returned from Finland to Iraq.

But after the pair broke up, Hussein reported the scam to the police in February 2020, blaming Al-Janabi and claiming he had only just discovered his former father-in-law was still alive.

The court, however, dismissed Hussein's account as "not reliable" and said his part in the deception was in fact "more active" than Al-Janabi's.

In its 2019 ruling, the ECHR did point out that only photocopies of Iraqi documents pertaining to the man's death were submitted to Finnish authorities, and that their authenticity could not be verified.

Finland's foreign ministry said Thursday it was seeking to have the Strasbourg judgement overturned.