Olof Palme assassination
Encyclopedia
The assassination
of Olof Palme
, the Prime Minister
of Sweden, took place on 28 February 1986 in Stockholm
, Sweden, at 23:21 hours Central European Time
(22:21 UTC
). Palme was fatally wound
ed by gunshot
s while walking home from a cinema
with his wife Lisbet Palme
on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen
. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.
The murder is still unsolved and a number of theories as to who carried out the murder have been proposed. Christer Pettersson
, a substance abuse
r who previously had been convicted of manslaughter
, was convicted of the murder in 1988 after having been identified as the killer by Palme's wife. However, on appeal to Svea Court of Appeal
he was acquitted
. Pettersson died in 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination.
Despite Olof Palme's position as prime minister, he sought to live as ordinary a life as possible. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from the Grand Cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme
on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen
, close to midnight on February 28, 1986, the couple were attacked by a lone gunperson. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Mrs Palme.
Police said that a taxi-driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm. Two girls sitting in a car close to the scene of the shooting tried to help the prime minister. He was rushed to a hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival at 00:06 CET on March 1, 1986.
The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan
and disappeared.
Deputy prime minister Ingvar Carlsson
immediately assumed the duties of prime minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party
.
At 20:30 the Palme couple left their apartment, unescorted, heading for the Gamla stan subway station. Several people witnessed their short walk to the station and, according to the later police investigation, commented on the lack of bodyguards. The couple took the subway train to the Rådmansgatan station, from where they walked to the Grand Cinema. They met with their son and his spouse just outside the theatre around 21:00. Olof Palme had not yet purchased tickets which were by then almost sold out. Recognizing the prime minister, the ticket clerk wanted him to have the best seats, and therefore sold Palme the theatre director's seats.
, they crossed Sveavägen and continued on the street's east side. They stopped a moment to look at something in a shop window, continued past the Dekorima shop (now renamed Kreatima) and headed for the subway station entrance. At 23:21, half the distance across the Tunnelgatan street and only a short distance from the station entrance, a man appeared from behind, shot Palme at point-blank range
and fired a second shot at Mrs Palme. The perpetrator then jogged down Tunnelgatan street, up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan and continued down David Bagares gata [street], where he was last seen.
. Both bullets correspond to the lead
fragments found in the clothing of Olof and Lisbet Palme. The singularly most used weapon for this type of ammunition is the Smith & Wesson
.357, which is why great efforts have been made to try and locate the murder weapon.
s. The investigation has placed particular emphasis on tracking down the ten Magnum revolvers reported stolen at the time of the murder. Out of these all have been located except the Sucksdorff revolver
, a weapon stolen from the Stockholm home of Swedish filmmaker Arne Sucksdorff
in 1977. The person who stole the weapon was a friend of drug dealer Sigge Cedergren, who claimed on his deathbed that he had lent a gun of the same type to Christer Pettersson
two months prior to the assassination.
Another weapon that have figured prominently in the investigation is the so called Mockfjärd
gun. This weapon, a revolver of the type Smith & Wesson Model 28
("Highway Patrolman") with .357 Magnum caliber, was first purchased legally by a civilian in the northern Swedish city of Luleå
. The gun along with 91 metal piercing bullets was stolen in a burglary in Haparanda
in 1983 and is believed to have been used in the robbery of a post office in Mockfjärd
, Dalarna
that same year. A lead isotope analysis
of a bullet fired during the robbery confirmed it to have the same isotopic composition as the bullets retrieved from the assassination crime scene, verifying that the bullets were manufactured at the same time. In the autumn of 2006, Swedish police acting on a tip communicated to the Expressen
newspaper retrieved a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver from a lake in Dalarna. The gun was determined to be the same one used in the post office robbery in Mockfjärd, confirmed by the gun's serial number. The gun was transferred to the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping
for further analysis. However, the laboratory concluded in May 2007 that tests on the gun could not confirm that it was used in the Palme assassination, as it was too rusty.
cited official German interrogation records in connection with another investigation from 2008 as showing that the assassination had been carried out by an operative of the Yugoslavian security service.
(labeled in the media 33-åringen, "the 33-year-old"), was soon arrested for the murder but quickly released, after a dispute between the police and prosecuting attorneys. Gunnarsson had connections to various extremist groups, among these the European Workers Party
, the Swedish branch of the LaRouche Movement
. Pamphlets hostile to Palme from the party were found in his home outside Stockholm.
Gunnarsson later moved to the United States of America, where he was murdered. Acquaintances stated he had admitted murdering Palme.
, the Stockholm police commissioner, followed up an intelligence lead passed to him (supposedly by Bertil Wedin
) and arrested a number of Kurds
living in Sweden, after allegations that one of their organisations, the PKK, was responsible for the murder. The lead proved inconclusive however and ultimately led to Holmér's removal from the Palme murder investigation. Fifteen years later, in April 2001, a team of Swedish police officers went to interview PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan
in a Turkish prison about Öcalan's allegations that a dissident Kurdish group, led by his ex-wife, murdered Palme. The police team's visit proved futile.
In 2007, renewed allegations of PKK complicity in Palme's assassination surfaced during the Ergenekon investigation
, which is ongoing as of October 2008.
, a petty criminal, drug user and alcoholic, who had previously been imprisoned for manslaughter
, was arrested for the murder of Palme. Picked out by Mrs Palme at a lineup as the killer, Pettersson was tried and convicted of the murder, but was later acquitted on appeal to the High Court. Pettersson's appeal succeeded for three main reasons:
Additional evidence against Pettersson surfaced in the late 1990s, mostly coming from various petty criminals who altered their stories but also from a confession made by Pettersson. The chief prosecutor, Agneta Blidberg, considered re-opening the case. But she acknowledged that a confession alone would not be sufficient, saying:
While the legal case against Pettersson therefore remains closed, the police file on the investigation cannot be closed until both murder weapon and murderer are found. Christer Pettersson died on September 29, 2004, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a falling accident onset by an epileptic seizure.
and the Anti-Apartheid Movement
such as Oliver Tambo
. In the address, Palme said, "Apartheid cannot be reformed, it has to be eliminated."
Ten years later, towards the end of September 1996, Colonel Eugene de Kock
, a former South African police officer, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria
, alleging that Palme had been shot and killed in 1986 because he "strongly opposed the apartheid regime and Sweden made substantial contributions to the ANC". De Kock went on to claim he knew the person responsible for Palme's murder. He alleged it was Craig Williamson
, a former police colleague and a South African superspy. A few days later, Brigadier Johannes Coetzee, who used to be Williamson's boss, identified Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout
with links to the South African security services, as Palme's actual murderer. Then a third person, Swedish mercenary Bertil Wedin
, living in Northern Cyprus since 1985, was named as the killer by Peter Caselton, a member of Coetzee's assassination squad known as Operation Longreach. The following month, in October 1996, Swedish police investigators visited South Africa, but were unable to uncover evidence to substantiate de Kock's claims.
A book that was published in 2007 suggested that a high-ranking Civil Cooperation Bureau
operative, Athol Visser (or 'Ivan the Terrible'), was responsible for planning and carrying out Olof Palme's assassination.
The 8 September 2010 edition of Efterlyst
, Sweden's equivalent of BBC TV's Crimewatch
programme, was co-hosted by Tommy Lindström, who was the head of Swedish CID at the time of Olof Palme's assassination. After being asked by Efterlyst's host Hasse Aro
who he believed was behind the assassination of the Prime Minister, Lindström without hesitating pointed to apartheid South Africa as the number one suspect. And the motive for this, he said, was to stop the payments that the Swedish government secretly paid, through Switzerland
, to the African National Congress
.
advanced a theory that Palme's murder was linked with arms trades to India. Bondeson's book meticulously recreated the assassination and its aftermath, and suggested that Palme had used his friendship with Rajiv Gandhi
to secure a SEK 8.4 billion deal for the Swedish armaments company Bofors
to supply the Indian Army with howitzer
s. However, Palme did not know that behind his back Bofors had used a shady company called AE Services — nominally based in Guildford
, Surrey
, England — to bribe Indian government officials to conclude the deal.
Bondeson alleged that on the morning he was assassinated, Palme had met with the Iraq
i ambassador to Sweden, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf
(the man who would later go on to become notorious as Saddam Hussein
's Information Minister during the 2003 Iraq War). The two discussed Bofors, which al-Sahhaf knew well because of its arms sales during the Iran–Iraq War. Bondeson suggested that the ambassador told Palme about Bofors' activities, infuriating Palme. Bondeson theorised that Palme's murder might have been inadvertently triggered by his conversation with the ambassador, if either the Bofors arms dealers or the middlemen working through AE Services had a prearranged plan to silence the Prime Minister should he discover the truth and the deal with India become threatened. According to Bondeson, Swedish police suppressed vital MI6 intelligence about a Bofors/AE Services deal with India.
(RAF) better known as the Baader-Meinhof Group of Germany claimed responsibility for the assassination of Palme via an anonymous phone call to a London news agency
. They supposedly assassinated him because he was the Prime Minister of Sweden during the West German embassy siege in Stockholm
in 1975 which ended in failure for the RAF. They claimed the assassination was carried out by the 'Holger Meins
Commando.'
an fascist Roberto Thieme killed Olof Palme. Thieme was head of the most militant wing of Patria y Libertad, a far-right political organization, financed by the U.S. CIA. According to Leopold, Palme was killed because he had freely given asylum to so many leftist Chileans following the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende
in 1973.
from March 1995, Klaus-Dieter Knapp presented his view of the assassination as a result of a conspiracy among Swedish right-wing extremist police officers. According to this report, the murderer was identified by two witnesses who happened to be at the scene and who knew the murderer from previous encounters.
programme broadcast on the Swedish television channel SVT
in February 2006, associates of Pettersson claimed that he had confessed to them his role in the murder, but with the explanation that it was a case of mistaken identity
. Apparently, Pettersson had intended to kill a drug dealer who customarily walked, in similar clothing, along the same street at night.
The programme also suggested there was greater police awareness than previously acknowledged because of surveillance of drug activity in the area. The police had several officers in apartments and cars along those few blocks of Sveavägen but, 45 minutes before the murder, the police monitoring ceased.
In the light of these latest revelations, Swedish police undertook to review Palme's case and Pettersson's role. However, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter
of February 28, 2006 carried articles ridiculing the TV documentary, and alleging that the filmmaker had fabricated a number of statements while omitting other contradictory evidence.
, "the Laser Man", also known as John Stannerman, was initially one of the suspects but it turned out that Ausonius had a solid alibi
, as he was imprisoned on the night Palme was shot.
detective, Roger Nyman (Mikael Persbrandt
), is on the trail of the international hitman (Ray Lambert, played by Michael Kitchen
) but finds his line of inquiry is blocked by senior police officers and the Swedish establishment. The reason suggested for the murder is the firm stance taken by Palme in rejecting deployment of nuclear weapons in Sweden and in rejecting war in general as a solution.
The Last Contract has been favourably compared to two other thriller films featuring political assassinations: The Day of the Jackal
and Oliver Stone
's JFK
.
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
of Olof Palme
Olof Palme
Sven Olof Joachim Palme was a Swedish politician. A long-time protegé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 to his assassination, and was a two-term Prime Minister of Sweden, heading a Privy Council Government from 1969 to 1976 and a cabinet...
, the Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Sweden
The Prime Minister is the head of government in the Kingdom of Sweden. Before the creation of the office of a Prime Minister in 1876, Sweden did not have a head of government separate from its head of state, namely the King, in whom the executive authority was vested...
of Sweden, took place on 28 February 1986 in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden, at 23:21 hours Central European Time
Central European Time
Central European Time , used in most parts of the European Union, is a standard time that is 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time . The time offset from UTC can be written as +01:00...
(22:21 UTC
Coordinated Universal Time
Coordinated Universal Time is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. Computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC for that purpose...
). Palme was fatally wound
Wound
A wound is a type of injury in which skin is torn, cut or punctured , or where blunt force trauma causes a contusion . In pathology, it specifically refers to a sharp injury which damages the dermis of the skin.-Open:...
ed by gunshot
Gunshot
A gunshot is the discharge of a firearm, producing a mechanical sound effect and a chemical gunshot residue. The term can also refer to a gunshot wound caused by such a discharge. Multiple discharges of a firearm or firearms are referred to as gunfire. The word can connotate either the sound of a...
s while walking home from a cinema
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
with his wife Lisbet Palme
Lisbet Palme
Anna Lisbet Christina Palme, née Beck-Friis is a former chairman of UNICEF, educated as a child psychologist. She is the widow of late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme...
on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen
Sveavägen
Sveavägen is a major street in Stockholm, Sweden. The street starts at Sergels torg in the city center and goes north out of the city towards the Haga Park. It is often known as the busiest road in Sweden....
. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.
The murder is still unsolved and a number of theories as to who carried out the murder have been proposed. Christer Pettersson
Christer Pettersson
Christer Pettersson was a Swedish criminal who was a suspect in the 1986 assassination of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden...
, a substance abuse
Substance abuse
A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
r who previously had been convicted of manslaughter
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
, was convicted of the murder in 1988 after having been identified as the killer by Palme's wife. However, on appeal to Svea Court of Appeal
Svea Court of Appeal
The Svea Court of Appeal , located in Stockholm, is one of six appellate courts in the Swedish legal system. It was founded in 1614 and was the highest court in Sweden until 1789, when the Supreme Court of Sweden was established....
he was acquitted
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
. Pettersson died in 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination.
Night of the assassination
Lisbet Palme
Anna Lisbet Christina Palme, née Beck-Friis is a former chairman of UNICEF, educated as a child psychologist. She is the widow of late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme...
on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen
Sveavägen
Sveavägen is a major street in Stockholm, Sweden. The street starts at Sergels torg in the city center and goes north out of the city towards the Haga Park. It is often known as the busiest road in Sweden....
, close to midnight on February 28, 1986, the couple were attacked by a lone gunperson. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range at 23:21 CET. A second shot wounded Mrs Palme.
Police said that a taxi-driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm. Two girls sitting in a car close to the scene of the shooting tried to help the prime minister. He was rushed to a hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival at 00:06 CET on March 1, 1986.
The attacker escaped eastwards on the Tunnelgatan
Tunnelgatan
Tunnelgatan is a street in Stockholm, Sweden, which stretches from Sveavägen to Brunkeberg tunnel.Tunnelgatan was named after the Brunkeberg tunnel which opened in 1886. The previous name was Barnhus trädgårdsgata , after the orphanage at Railway Square. During the 17th century, there was a rope...
and disappeared.
Deputy prime minister Ingvar Carlsson
Ingvar Carlsson
Gösta Ingvar Carlsson is a Swedish politician, Prime Minister of Sweden and leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party ....
immediately assumed the duties of prime minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party
Swedish Social Democratic Party
The Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party, , contesting elections as 'the Workers' Party – the Social Democrats' , or sometimes referred to just as 'the Social Democrats' and most commonly as Sossarna ; is the oldest and largest political party in Sweden. The party was founded in 1889...
.
Cinema decision
Palme's decision to visit the Grand Cinema was made at very short notice. Lisbet Palme had discussed seeing a film when she was at work during the afternoon, and called her son, Mårten Palme, at 17:00 to talk about the film at the Grand Cinema. Olof Palme did not hear about the plans until at home, at 18:30, when he met with his wife, by which time Palme had already declined any further personal bodyguard protection from the security service. He talked to his son about the plans on the phone, and they eventually decided to join Mårten and his spouse, who had already purchased tickets for themselves. This decision was made about 20:00. The police later searched Palme's apartment, as well as Lisbet's and Mårten's work places, for wire-bugging devices or traces of such equipment, but did not find any.Grand Cinema
The murder
After the screening, the Palme family stayed outside the theatre for a while but separated about 23:15. Olof and Lisbet Palme headed south on the west side of Sveavägen street, towards the Hötorget subway station. When they reached the Adolf Fredrik's ChurchAdolf Fredriks kyrka
Adolf Fredriks kyrka is a church in central Stockholm, Sweden. It was built in 1768-1774, replacing a wooden chapel from 1674, which was dedicated to Saint Olof....
, they crossed Sveavägen and continued on the street's east side. They stopped a moment to look at something in a shop window, continued past the Dekorima shop (now renamed Kreatima) and headed for the subway station entrance. At 23:21, half the distance across the Tunnelgatan street and only a short distance from the station entrance, a man appeared from behind, shot Palme at point-blank range
Point-blank range
In external ballistics, point-blank range is the distance between a firearm and a target of a given size such that the bullet in flight is expected to strike the target without adjusting the elevation of the firearm. The point-blank range will vary with the firearm and its particular ballistic...
and fired a second shot at Mrs Palme. The perpetrator then jogged down Tunnelgatan street, up the steps to Malmskillnadsgatan and continued down David Bagares gata [street], where he was last seen.
Timeline
Thanks to time stamps on records for radio and telecommunication, many events have been determined with a very high precision.- 23:21:30 — The Palme couple are shot.
- 23:22:20 — The 90000 SOSSOSSOS is the commonly used description for the international Morse code distress signal...
emergency line receives a phone call. An eye witness says there is 'murder on Sveavägen', and is immediately redirected to the police. However the phone call is not redirected properly and the caller is not put through to the police.
- 23:23:40 — A Järfälla Taxi switchboardTelephone switchboardA switchboard was a device used to connect a group of telephones manually to one another or to an outside connection, within and between telephone exchanges or private branch exchanges . The user was typically known as an operator...
operator calls directly to the police dispatch center on behalf of one of its drivers on the scene. He can not, however, give any more details than that someone has been shot at the corner Sveavägen/Tunnelgatan.
- 23:24:00 (ca) — The first police patrol arrives at the scene. Stationed on Kungsgatan, a few hundred feet from the scene, the patrol is alerted by a second taxi driver who heard the emergency call via the taxi radio.
- 23:24:40 — The police dispatch center is contacted by the SOS alarm central concerning the shooting on Sveavägen. The dispatch center operator denies knowledge about any such events.
- 23:24:00–23:25:30 (ca) — A second police patrol, a patrol wagon, arrives at the crime scene. The patrol was stationed at Malmskillnadsgatan at the time of murder, not far from the perpetrator's escape route. They are ordered by the commanding officer at the scene, Superintendent Gösta Söderström, to immediately take up the hunt for the perpetrator.
- 23:25:00 (ca) — A patrolling ambulance is stopped at the scene and gives immediate assistance to the victims.
- 23:26:00 — The police dispatch center calls the SOS emergency center to assure them they are informed about the events on the Sveavägen/Tunnelgatan intersection.
- A third police patrol wagon arrives at the scene; the patrol was refueling at a gas station when they were called out to the scene.
- A second ambulance arrives at the scene to assist their colleagues from the first ambulance.
- 23:28:00 — The first ambulance leaves the scene, rushing for the Sabbatsberg hospital with prime minister Olof Palme and his wife. Mrs Palme, not being severely wounded, refuses to leave her husband.
- 23:30:00 — Superintendent Söderström contacts the police dispatch center to inform them that it is the prime minister who has been shot.
- 23:31:40 — The SOS central is informed that the ambulance has arrived at the hospital.
- 00:06:00 — Prime Minister Olof Palme is pronounced dead at the Sabbatsberg hospital.
- 00:45:00 — Vice prime minister Ingvar Carlsson arrives at RosenbadRosenbadRosenbad is a building in central Stockholm, precinct of Norrmalm, designed by Art Nouveau architect Ferdinand Boberg and completed in 1902. It is located on Strömgatan on the North side of the river Norrström...
.
- 01:10:00 — First radio broadcast about the murder.
- 04:00:00 — First TV broadcast about the events.
- 05:15:00 — The government holds a press conference.
Leads from the crime scene
The only leads left by the assassin are two bullets of the type Winchester-Western .357 Magnum.357 Magnum
The .357 S&W Magnum , or simply .357 Magnum, is a revolver cartridge created by Elmer Keith, Phillip B. Sharpe, Colonel D. B. Wesson of firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson, and Winchester. It is based upon Smith & Wesson's earlier .38 Special cartridge. The .357 Magnum cartridge was introduced in...
. Both bullets correspond to the lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
fragments found in the clothing of Olof and Lisbet Palme. The singularly most used weapon for this type of ammunition is the Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handguns in the United States. The corporate headquarters is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1852, Smith & Wesson's pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world...
.357, which is why great efforts have been made to try and locate the murder weapon.
The search for the murder weapon
Throughout the investigation, Swedish police have test-fired approximately 500 Magnum revolverRevolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
s. The investigation has placed particular emphasis on tracking down the ten Magnum revolvers reported stolen at the time of the murder. Out of these all have been located except the Sucksdorff revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
, a weapon stolen from the Stockholm home of Swedish filmmaker Arne Sucksdorff
Arne Sucksdorff
Arne Sucksdorff was a Swedish movie director, considered one of cinema's greatest documentary filmmakers. He was particularly celebrated for his visually poetic and scenic nature documentaries...
in 1977. The person who stole the weapon was a friend of drug dealer Sigge Cedergren, who claimed on his deathbed that he had lent a gun of the same type to Christer Pettersson
Christer Pettersson
Christer Pettersson was a Swedish criminal who was a suspect in the 1986 assassination of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden...
two months prior to the assassination.
Another weapon that have figured prominently in the investigation is the so called Mockfjärd
Mockfjärd
Mockfjärd is a locality situated in Gagnef Municipality, Dalarna County, Sweden with 1,935 inhabitants in 2005....
gun. This weapon, a revolver of the type Smith & Wesson Model 28
Smith & Wesson Model 28
The Smith & Wesson Model 28, also known as the Highway Patrolman, is a revolver chambered for the .357 Magnum cartridge, in production from 1954 to 1986. It is a budget version of the S&W Model 27.-Development:...
("Highway Patrolman") with .357 Magnum caliber, was first purchased legally by a civilian in the northern Swedish city of Luleå
Luleå
- Transportation :Local buses are run by .A passenger train service is available from Luleå Centralstation on Sweden's national SJ railway service northbound to Narvik on the Norwegian coast, or southbound to Stockholm. See Rail transport in Sweden....
. The gun along with 91 metal piercing bullets was stolen in a burglary in Haparanda
Haparanda
Haparanda is a locality and the seat of Haparanda Municipality in Norrbotten County, Sweden with 4,778 inhabitants in 2005. It is adjacent to Tornio, Finland...
in 1983 and is believed to have been used in the robbery of a post office in Mockfjärd
Mockfjärd
Mockfjärd is a locality situated in Gagnef Municipality, Dalarna County, Sweden with 1,935 inhabitants in 2005....
, Dalarna
Dalarna
', English exonym: Dalecarlia, is a historical province or landskap in central Sweden. Another English language form established in literature is the Dales. Places involving the element Dalecarlia exist in the United States....
that same year. A lead isotope analysis
Isotope analysis
Isotope analysis is the identification of isotopic signature, the distribution of certain stable isotopes and chemical elements within chemical compounds. This can be applied to a food web to make it possible to draw direct inferences regarding diet, trophic level, and subsistence...
of a bullet fired during the robbery confirmed it to have the same isotopic composition as the bullets retrieved from the assassination crime scene, verifying that the bullets were manufactured at the same time. In the autumn of 2006, Swedish police acting on a tip communicated to the Expressen
Expressen
Expressen is one of two nationwide evening tabloid newspapers in Sweden, the other being Aftonbladet. Expressen was founded in 1944; its symbol is a wasp and slogans "it stings" or "Expressen to your rescue", always on the reader's side....
newspaper retrieved a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver from a lake in Dalarna. The gun was determined to be the same one used in the post office robbery in Mockfjärd, confirmed by the gun's serial number. The gun was transferred to the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping
Linköping
Linköping is a city in southern middle Sweden, with 104 232 inhabitants in 2010. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality with 146 736 inhabitants and the capital of Östergötland County...
for further analysis. However, the laboratory concluded in May 2007 that tests on the gun could not confirm that it was used in the Palme assassination, as it was too rusty.
Murder theories
Palme's assassination remains unsolved, with a number of alternative theories surrounding the murder.Yugoslavian connection
In January 2011 the German magazine FocusFocus (German magazine)
Focus is a German weekly news magazine published in Munich and distributed throughout Germany. It is the third-largest weekly news magazine in Germany. It is considered conservative and leaned towards economic liberalism.- Overview :...
cited official German interrogation records in connection with another investigation from 2008 as showing that the assassination had been carried out by an operative of the Yugoslavian security service.
"The 33-year-old"
A Swedish extremist, Victor GunnarssonVictor Gunnarsson
Victor Gunnarsson was a former Swedish right-wing extremist, who was a suspect in the 1986 Olof Palme assassination. He was later in turn murdered in 1993 in North Carolina by former police officer Lamont C...
(labeled in the media 33-åringen, "the 33-year-old"), was soon arrested for the murder but quickly released, after a dispute between the police and prosecuting attorneys. Gunnarsson had connections to various extremist groups, among these the European Workers Party
European Workers Party
The European Workers' Party is a very small political party in Sweden without parliamentary representation. The party is the Swedish section of the LaRouche Movement.-History:...
, the Swedish branch of the LaRouche Movement
LaRouche movement
The LaRouche movement is an international political and cultural network that promotes Lyndon LaRouche and his ideas. It has included scores of organizations and companies around the world. Their activities include campaigning, private intelligence gathering, and publishing numerous periodicals,...
. Pamphlets hostile to Palme from the party were found in his home outside Stockholm.
Gunnarsson later moved to the United States of America, where he was murdered. Acquaintances stated he had admitted murdering Palme.
PKK
Hans HolmérHans Holmér
Hans Holmér, , Chief of the Swedish National Security Service and later Stockholm county administrative chief of police. He became well known during his tenure, spanning barely a year, as Chief of the special investigation unit into the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme...
, the Stockholm police commissioner, followed up an intelligence lead passed to him (supposedly by Bertil Wedin
Bertil Wedin
Former Swedish secret service agent, Bertil Wedin , was accused in an English court – but acquitted – of the 1982 burglary of the Pan Africanist Congress office in London. In 1996, Wedin was named as the killer of Sweden's premier, Olof Palme...
) and arrested a number of Kurds
Kurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
living in Sweden, after allegations that one of their organisations, the PKK, was responsible for the murder. The lead proved inconclusive however and ultimately led to Holmér's removal from the Palme murder investigation. Fifteen years later, in April 2001, a team of Swedish police officers went to interview PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan
Abdullah Öcalan
Abdullah Öcalan , Kurdish founder of the terrorist organization called Kurdistan Workers' Party in 1978.Öcalan was captured in Nairobi and extradited to the Turkish security force, and sentenced to death under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code, which concerns the formation of armed gangs...
in a Turkish prison about Öcalan's allegations that a dissident Kurdish group, led by his ex-wife, murdered Palme. The police team's visit proved futile.
In 2007, renewed allegations of PKK complicity in Palme's assassination surfaced during the Ergenekon investigation
Ergenekon network
Ergenekon is the name given to an alleged clandestine, Kemalist ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey with possible ties to members of the country's military and security forces...
, which is ongoing as of October 2008.
Christer Pettersson
In December 1988, almost three years after Palme's death, Christer PetterssonChrister Pettersson
Christer Pettersson was a Swedish criminal who was a suspect in the 1986 assassination of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden...
, a petty criminal, drug user and alcoholic, who had previously been imprisoned for manslaughter
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
, was arrested for the murder of Palme. Picked out by Mrs Palme at a lineup as the killer, Pettersson was tried and convicted of the murder, but was later acquitted on appeal to the High Court. Pettersson's appeal succeeded for three main reasons:
- The murder weapon had not been found;
- He had no clear motive for the killing;
- Doubts about the reliability of Mrs Palme's testimony.
Additional evidence against Pettersson surfaced in the late 1990s, mostly coming from various petty criminals who altered their stories but also from a confession made by Pettersson. The chief prosecutor, Agneta Blidberg, considered re-opening the case. But she acknowledged that a confession alone would not be sufficient, saying:
He must say something about the weapon because the appeals court set that condition in its ruling. That is the only technical evidence that could be cited as a reason to re-open the case.
While the legal case against Pettersson therefore remains closed, the police file on the investigation cannot be closed until both murder weapon and murderer are found. Christer Pettersson died on September 29, 2004, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a falling accident onset by an epileptic seizure.
Apartheid South Africa
On 21 February 1986 — a week before he was murdered — Palme made the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held in Stockholm, attended by hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathizers as well as leaders and officials from the ANCAfrican National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
and the Anti-Apartheid Movement
Anti-Apartheid Movement
Anti-Apartheid Movement , originally known as the Boycott Movement, was a British organization that was at the center of the international movement opposing South Africa's system of apartheid and supporting South Africa's Blacks....
such as Oliver Tambo
Oliver Tambo
Oliver Reginald Tambo was a South African anti-apartheid politician and a central figure in the African National Congress .-Biography:Oliver Tambo was born in Bizana in eastern Pondoland in what is now Eastern Cape...
. In the address, Palme said, "Apartheid cannot be reformed, it has to be eliminated."
Ten years later, towards the end of September 1996, Colonel Eugene de Kock
Eugene de Kock
Eugene de Kock is a former colonel of the South African Police force during Apartheid in South Africa. Dubbed "Prime Evil" by the media, he was the commander of C1 unit of the South African Police counter-insurgency group, well known for kidnapping, torturing and murdering hundreds of...
, a former South African police officer, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria
Pretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
, alleging that Palme had been shot and killed in 1986 because he "strongly opposed the apartheid regime and Sweden made substantial contributions to the ANC". De Kock went on to claim he knew the person responsible for Palme's murder. He alleged it was Craig Williamson
Craig Williamson
Craig Michael Williamson , a former South African police major, was exposed as a spy in 1980, and was involved in a series of state-sponsored overseas bombings, burglaries, kidnappings, assassinations and propaganda during the apartheid era.-Infiltration:In the late 1970s, Craig Williamson had...
, a former police colleague and a South African superspy. A few days later, Brigadier Johannes Coetzee, who used to be Williamson's boss, identified Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout
Selous Scouts
The Selous Scouts was a special forces regiment of the Rhodesian Army, which operated from 1973 until the introduction of majority rule in 1980. It was named after British explorer Frederick Courteney Selous , and their motto was pamwe chete, which, in the Shona language, roughly means "all...
with links to the South African security services, as Palme's actual murderer. Then a third person, Swedish mercenary Bertil Wedin
Bertil Wedin
Former Swedish secret service agent, Bertil Wedin , was accused in an English court – but acquitted – of the 1982 burglary of the Pan Africanist Congress office in London. In 1996, Wedin was named as the killer of Sweden's premier, Olof Palme...
, living in Northern Cyprus since 1985, was named as the killer by Peter Caselton, a member of Coetzee's assassination squad known as Operation Longreach. The following month, in October 1996, Swedish police investigators visited South Africa, but were unable to uncover evidence to substantiate de Kock's claims.
A book that was published in 2007 suggested that a high-ranking Civil Cooperation Bureau
Civil Cooperation Bureau
The South African Civil Cooperation Bureau was a government-sponsored hit squad during the apartheid era that operated under the authority of Defence Minister General Magnus Malan...
operative, Athol Visser (or 'Ivan the Terrible'), was responsible for planning and carrying out Olof Palme's assassination.
The 8 September 2010 edition of Efterlyst
Efterlyst
Efterlyst is a Swedish TV program, equivalent of America's Most Wanted. The show plays security camera footage, reconstructions of crimes, and then takes calls and tips from the Swedish public...
, Sweden's equivalent of BBC TV's Crimewatch
Crimewatch
Crimewatch is a long-running and high-profile British television programme produced by the BBC, that reconstructs major unsolved crimes with a view to gaining information from the members of the public. The programme is usually broadcast once a month on BBC One...
programme, was co-hosted by Tommy Lindström, who was the head of Swedish CID at the time of Olof Palme's assassination. After being asked by Efterlyst's host Hasse Aro
Hasse Aro
Hasse Aro is a Swedish Television host and Television producer of Finnish parentage which since 1991 has hosted the TV3 show Efterlyst. Aro has won awards for Best male television host of 2005 and 2007 he also won for best television production for the production for Expedition Robinson in 2005...
who he believed was behind the assassination of the Prime Minister, Lindström without hesitating pointed to apartheid South Africa as the number one suspect. And the motive for this, he said, was to stop the payments that the Swedish government secretly paid, through Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, to the African National Congress
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
.
Bofors and Indian connection
In his 2005 book Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme historian Jan BondesonJan Bondeson
Jan Bondeson is a Swedish-born rheumatologist, scientist and author, working as a senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at the Cardiff University School of Medicine. Outside of his career in medicine, he has written several nonfiction books on a variety of topics, such as medical anomalies...
advanced a theory that Palme's murder was linked with arms trades to India. Bondeson's book meticulously recreated the assassination and its aftermath, and suggested that Palme had used his friendship with Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was the sixth Prime Minister of India . He took office after his mother's assassination on 31 October 1984; he himself was assassinated on 21 May 1991. He became the youngest Prime Minister of India when he took office at the age of 40.Rajiv Gandhi was the elder son of Indira...
to secure a SEK 8.4 billion deal for the Swedish armaments company Bofors
Bofors
The name Bofors has been associated with the iron industry for more than 350 years.Located in Karlskoga, Sweden, the company originates from the hammer mill "Boofors" founded 1646. The modern corporate structure was created in 1873 with the foundation of Aktiebolaget Bofors-Gullspång...
to supply the Indian Army with howitzer
Howitzer
A howitzer is a type of artillery piece characterized by a relatively short barrel and the use of comparatively small propellant charges to propel projectiles at relatively high trajectories, with a steep angle of descent...
s. However, Palme did not know that behind his back Bofors had used a shady company called AE Services — nominally based in Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, England — to bribe Indian government officials to conclude the deal.
Bondeson alleged that on the morning he was assassinated, Palme had met with the Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
i ambassador to Sweden, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf
Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is a former Iraqi diplomat and politician. He came to wide prominence around the world during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, during which he was the Iraqi Information Minister under Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, acting as the mouthpiece for the Baath Party and Saddam's regime...
(the man who would later go on to become notorious as Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
's Information Minister during the 2003 Iraq War). The two discussed Bofors, which al-Sahhaf knew well because of its arms sales during the Iran–Iraq War. Bondeson suggested that the ambassador told Palme about Bofors' activities, infuriating Palme. Bondeson theorised that Palme's murder might have been inadvertently triggered by his conversation with the ambassador, if either the Bofors arms dealers or the middlemen working through AE Services had a prearranged plan to silence the Prime Minister should he discover the truth and the deal with India become threatened. According to Bondeson, Swedish police suppressed vital MI6 intelligence about a Bofors/AE Services deal with India.
The Red Army Faction
The Red Army FactionRed Army Faction
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...
(RAF) better known as the Baader-Meinhof Group of Germany claimed responsibility for the assassination of Palme via an anonymous phone call to a London news agency
News agency
A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire or news service.-History:The oldest news agency is Agence...
. They supposedly assassinated him because he was the Prime Minister of Sweden during the West German embassy siege in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
in 1975 which ended in failure for the RAF. They claimed the assassination was carried out by the 'Holger Meins
Holger Meins
Holger Klaus Meins was a German cinematography student who joined the Red Army Faction in the early 1970s and died on hunger strike in prison.-As a Revolutionary:...
Commando.'
Roberto Thieme
The Swedish journalist Anders Leopold, in his 2008 book Det svenska trädet skall fällas ("The Swedish Tree Shall Be Brought Down"), makes the case that the ChileChile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an fascist Roberto Thieme killed Olof Palme. Thieme was head of the most militant wing of Patria y Libertad, a far-right political organization, financed by the U.S. CIA. According to Leopold, Palme was killed because he had freely given asylum to so many leftist Chileans following the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
in 1973.
Police conspiracy
In an article in the German weekly Die ZeitDie Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
from March 1995, Klaus-Dieter Knapp presented his view of the assassination as a result of a conspiracy among Swedish right-wing extremist police officers. According to this report, the murderer was identified by two witnesses who happened to be at the scene and who knew the murderer from previous encounters.
New evidence?
According to a documentaryDocumentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
programme broadcast on the Swedish television channel SVT
Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television AB , Sweden's Television, is a national television broadcaster based in Sweden, funded by a compulsory fee to be paid by all television owners...
in February 2006, associates of Pettersson claimed that he had confessed to them his role in the murder, but with the explanation that it was a case of mistaken identity
Mistaken identity
Mistaken identity is a defense in criminal law which claims the actual innocence of the criminal defendant, and attempts to undermine evidence of guilt by asserting that any eyewitness to the crime incorrectly thought that they saw the defendant, when in fact the person seen by the witness was...
. Apparently, Pettersson had intended to kill a drug dealer who customarily walked, in similar clothing, along the same street at night.
The programme also suggested there was greater police awareness than previously acknowledged because of surveillance of drug activity in the area. The police had several officers in apartments and cars along those few blocks of Sveavägen but, 45 minutes before the murder, the police monitoring ceased.
In the light of these latest revelations, Swedish police undertook to review Palme's case and Pettersson's role. However, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter
Dagens Nyheter
is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It has the largest circulation of Swedish morning newspapers, followed by Göteborgs-Posten and Svenska Dagbladet, and is the only morning newspaper that is distributed to subscribers across the whole country. In 2009 DN had a circulation of 316,000, reaching 881...
of February 28, 2006 carried articles ridiculing the TV documentary, and alleging that the filmmaker had fabricated a number of statements while omitting other contradictory evidence.
Other theories
John AusoniusJohn Ausonius
John Wolfgang Alexander Ausonius , known in the media as Lasermannen is a Swedish convicted murderer, bank robber, and attempted serial killer. From August 1991 to January 1992 he shot eleven people in the Stockholm and Uppsala area, most of whom were immigrants, killing one and seriously injuring...
, "the Laser Man", also known as John Stannerman, was initially one of the suspects but it turned out that Ausonius had a solid alibi
Alibi
Alibi is a 1929 American crime film directed by Roland West. The screenplay was written by West and C. Gardner Sullivan, who adapted the 1927 Broadway stage play, Nightstick, written by Elaine Sterne Carrington, J.C...
, as he was imprisoned on the night Palme was shot.
Figures
- The cost of the investigation stands at SEK 350 million, €38 million or US$45 million as of 25 February 2006.
- The total number of pages accumulated during the investigation is around 700,000. According to criminologist Leif GW Persson, the investigation is "the largest in global police history".
- The reward for solving the murder is SEK 50 million (approximately €5 million or US$7 million.)
Film portrayals
In the 1998 Swedish fictional thriller film The Last Contract (Sista kontraktet), Palme's assassination was portrayed as having been planned by a hired assassin. A Special BranchSpecial Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...
detective, Roger Nyman (Mikael Persbrandt
Mikael Persbrandt
Mikael Åke Persbrandt is a Swedish actor. In Swedish films he usually has lead roles and “tough guy” parts. He is perhaps most famous for his recurring role as the no-nonsense police officer Gunvald Larsson in the latest installment of the Martin Beck movies...
), is on the trail of the international hitman (Ray Lambert, played by Michael Kitchen
Michael Kitchen
Michael Kitchen is an English actor and television producer, best known for his starring role as DCS Foyle in the British TV series Foyle's War.-Early life:...
) but finds his line of inquiry is blocked by senior police officers and the Swedish establishment. The reason suggested for the murder is the firm stance taken by Palme in rejecting deployment of nuclear weapons in Sweden and in rejecting war in general as a solution.
The Last Contract has been favourably compared to two other thriller films featuring political assassinations: The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal (film)
The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 Anglo-French film, set in August 1963 and based on the novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth. Directed by Fred Zinnemann, it stars Edward Fox as the assassin known only as "the Jackal" who is hired to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.- Synopsis :The film opens...
and Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
's JFK
JFK (film)
JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison .Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay...
.
Literature
- Jan Bondeson (2005). Blood on the snow: The killing of Olof Palme, Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801442117
- Kari and Pertti Poutiainen, (1994) Inuti labyrinten. (Within the labyrinth.), Grimur. ISBN 9789163081286
- Olof Palme är skjuten! (Olof Palme has been shot!) Hans Holmér, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1988. ISBN 9146161538
- "Ah, was it him? The predicted murder of Olof Palme and the Dutch connection" , 2006, Elzo Springer and Dolf van Soest, Netherlands, ISBN 90-810277-1-9 Leif GW Persson is a Swedish criminologist and, 9 years prior to the assassination, a member of the Swedish National Police Board. The book is the thinly disguised story of events leading to the assassination of Olof Palme. The book has Palme as having been a CIA agent in his days of student politics but who later turned to work for the Soviets. Persson cleverly weaves the known facts and theories into his story and introduces another credible suggestion; that the assassination was carried out by a hit man hired by a renegade member of the Swedish Security Service.
- John Douglas-Gray in his thriller 'The Novak Legacy' ISBN 978-0-7552-1321-4
External links
- Swedish prime minister assassinated
- Experts doubt Palme case to reopen
- Karisable. Retrieved 14 February 2005
- The Olof Palme murder: who covered it up?
- Television archive: The murder of Olof Palme