Swedish foreign minister assassined

yes, folks, it even happens in a tiny country like sweden. i just thought this deserved some attention, besides the usual iraqi-talks.

Minister had ignored referendum hate mail

Ian Black in Stockholm
Saturday September 13, 2003
The Guardian

Anna Lindh had been getting hate mail during the euro campaign, it emerged yesterday.
The foreign ministry said she had received six letters and emails, some with "harsh language", after she and a business leader co-wrote an opinion piece on why Sweden should vote to adopt the euro in tomorrow's referendum.

One letter last month told her she was a "power-hungry bitch sitting in the lap of big business". But the foreign minister had not asked to see such letters; nor were they considered threats on her life and given to police, according to a ministry spokesman.

In the wake of her death, however, all correspondence in the past few weeks is being examined, said Margareta Linderoth, a spokeswoman for Sweden's security agency, or SAPO.

Police said that a surveillance camera in the department store where Ms Lindh was stabbed on Wednesday had recorded images of a man who could be her killer. "He seems to fit very well the descriptions we have compiled," the Stockholm police commissioner, Leif Jennekvist, told a news conference. The prospects of catching him were "very good", he said.

Yesterday there was an appeal for a mystery witness also captured on the video to come forward. Fifteen witnesses to Wednesday's stabbing have contacted police, but police said they wanted to interview a woman of "southern European" appearance who shouted "grab him" as the assailant got away.

Police confirmed that two men had been questioned and released without charge. They are still searching for what they described as a stocky Swedish man with bad skin and shoulder-length dark-blond hair, possibly with a criminal record. The suspect is described as about 30, clean-shaven, and wearing a hooded sweater and some kind of hat.

Forensic experts are looking for fingerprints on a handrail on the escalator down which he fled the NK department store.

Mr Jennekvist said police had no reason to alter their view that the killer acted on the spur of the moment. Any planning could not have lasted more than a couple of minutes.

Police commanders defended their decision not to halt trains on the Stockholm underground after the attack, or to seal the country's borders. They also rejected criticism that they took too long to issue a country-wide alert.

Mr Jennekvist acknowledged that police were in great need of clues, but was confident they would find the killer: "That's our job."

There is enormous pressure to solve what is Sweden's biggest crime since the prime minister, Olof Palme, was killed in uncannily similar circumstances 17 years ago - a murder that remains unsolved. Bizarrely, the case is to be handled by the same prosecutor who is still dealing with the unclosed Palme dossier.

Contrary to expectations, the police failed to produce an E-fit of the suspect, on the grounds that it might fix a misleading image in people's minds and hamper their inquiries.


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