Assassination of Olof Palme

Assassination of Olof Palme

The killing of Palme left Sweden in a state of shock. A couple of days after the assassination, the thousands of flowers left by passers-by at the site of the murder formed a huge pile.
Location Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan, Stockholm, Sweden
Coordinates 59°20′12″N 18°03′46″E / 59.3366°N 18.0628°E / 59.3366; 18.0628 (Olof Palme Assassination)Coordinates: 59°20′12″N 18°03′46″E / 59.3366°N 18.0628°E / 59.3366; 18.0628 (Olof Palme Assassination)
Date 28 February 1986
23.21 (Central European Time)
Target Olof Palme
Attack type
 Assassination
Weapons Probably a revolver (.357 Magnum)
Deaths 1 killed (Olof Palme)
Non-fatal injuries
 1 wounded (Lisbet Palme)
Perpetrators Unknown

Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was assassinated on 28 February 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden, at 23:21 hours Central European Time (22:21 UTC). Palme was fatally wounded by a single gunshot while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen. Mrs Palme was slightly wounded by a second shot. The couple did not have bodyguards at the time.

Christer Pettersson, a substance abuser 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. A petition for a new trial, filed by the prosecutor, was denied by the Supreme Court of Sweden. Pettersson died in 2004, legally declared not guilty of the Palme assassination. The case remains unsolved and has given rise to a number of conspiracy theories.

Night of the assassination

Prime Minister Olof Palme in the early 1970s.

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 28 February 1986, the couple were attacked by a lone gunman. 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 1 March 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.

Sequence of events

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 girlfriend, who had already purchased tickets for themselves to see the Swedish comedy Bröderna Mozart ("The Mozart Brothers") by Suzanne Osten. 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.[1]

Grand Cinema

Grand cinema.
Crossing of Sveavägen–Tunnelgatan where Palme was shot.
Tunnelgatan. The assassin's immediate escape route.

At 20:30 the Palmes left their apartment, unescorted, heading for the Gamla stan metro 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 their son and his girlfriend just outside the cinema 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.[2]

Murder

After the screening, the two couples stayed outside the theatre for a while but separated about 23:15. Olof and Lisbet Palme headed south on the west side of Sveavägen, towards the northern entrance of the Hötorget metro station. When they reached the Adolf Fredrik Church, 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 which was then located on the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan, and headed for the metro station entrance on the other side of Tunnelgatan. At 23:21, halfway across the street and only a few metres from the station entrance, a man appeared from behind, shot Mr. 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.[3]

Timeline

Thanks to time stamps on records for radio and telecommunication, many events have been determined with a very high precision.[4]

Leads from the crime scene

The only forensic leads left by the assassin were the two bullets fired, identified as Winchester-Western .357 Magnum 158 grain metal piercing. Both bullets matched the lead fragments found in the clothing of Olof and Lisbet Palme. Because the weapon was a revolver (which does not automatically eject cartridge cases) there were no cases to recover for ballistic examination - only the two bullets recovered from the street. From the bullets' lack of certain characteristic deformations, investigators concluded they had been fired from a barrel no shorter than four inches; thus the murder weapon would have been a conspicuously large handgun. The singularly most used weapon for this type of ammunition is the Smith & Wesson .357, which is why great efforts have been made to locate a weapon of this make.[5]

Throughout the investigation, Swedish police have test-fired approximately 500 Magnum revolvers. The investigation has placed particular emphasis on tracking down 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 Sigvard "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.[6]

Another weapon that has 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.[7] 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 whether it was used in the Palme assassination, as it was too rusty.[8][9]

There were several witnesses to the murder, of whom more than 25 have come forward to the police. The killer was described by witnesses as a man between 30 and 50 years of age, about 180 to 185 centimetres tall, and wearing a dark jacket or coat. Many described him as having walked with a limp or otherwise clumsily. No witness was in a position to observe the killer's appearance in any detail. A police sketch of the supposed killer was widely circulated in the media a week after the murder, leading to a massive influx of tips from the public, but it was later determined that the witness on whose statement it was based probably had not seen the actual assailant. No good description of the killer's appearance therefore exists. Witnesses agreed on the killer's escape route.

Murder theories

Palme's assassination remains unsolved, with a number of alternative theories surrounding the murder. At the time, a murder under Swedish law was subject to prescription in 25 years. The law was later changed to prevent the Palme case from expiring, and thus the police investigation remains active.

Yugoslavian connection

In January 2011 the German magazine Focus 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.[10][11]

"The 33-year-old"

A Swedish extremist, Victor Gunnarsson (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.[12] Pamphlets hostile to Palme from the party were found in his home outside Stockholm.

Christer Pettersson

Mugshot of Christer Pettersson.

In December 1988, almost three years after Palme's death, Christer Pettersson, a 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 court of appeal. 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:

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 haemorrhage caused by a fall during an epileptic seizure.

According to a documentary 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. Allegedly, Pettersson had intended to kill Sigvard Cedergren, a drug dealer who customarily walked along the same street at night and resembled Palme both in appearance and dress. 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 revelations, Swedish police undertook to review Palme's case and Pettersson's role. Writing in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter of 28 February 2006 other SVT reporters scathingly criticized the documentary, alleging that the film-maker had fabricated a number of statements while omitting other contradictory evidence, in particular his chief source's earlier testimony that could not be reconciled with his claim to have seen the shooting.[13]

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 ANC 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".[14][15] 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 spy. 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.[16] 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.[16] 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.[17]

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 (financed by the Soviet Union) that the Swedish government secretly paid, through Switzerland, to the African National Congress.[18]

Bofors and Indian connection

In his 2005 book Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme historian Jan Bondeson 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 howitzers. 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 - the Bofors scandal.

Bondeson alleged that on the morning he was assassinated, Palme had met with the Iraqi ambassador to Sweden, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf. The two discussed Bofors, which al-Sahhaf knew well because of its arms sales during the Iran–Iraq War. Bondeson suggested that the ambassador had told Palme about Bofors' activities, infuriating Palme. Bondeson theorized 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.

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 Chilean 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 US CIA. According to Leopold, Palme was killed because he had liberally given asylum to so many leftist Chileans following the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in 1973.[19]

Police conspiracy

In an article in the German weekly Die Zeit 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.[20] 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.

Memorial plaque at the place of the assassination, reading: "Here, Sweden's prime minister Olof Palme was murdered, on 28 February 1986."

PKK

Hans Holmér, 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 organizations, 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 Turkish allegations that a dissident Kurdish group, led by Öcalan's ex-wife, murdered Palme.[21][22] The police team's visit proved futile.

In 2007, renewed allegations of PKK complicity in Palme's assassination surfaced in Turkish media during the Ergenekon investigation, which was ongoing as of October 2008.[23]

The Turkish newspapers have several times claimed that the PKK has admitted the murder but the PKK have always denied all claims.[24] In 1998, the PKK said that there is a strong indication that the Turkish side is trying to discredit the PKK using Oloh Palme's murder.[24] Also many Kurdish organizations believe that the initial claims were propaganda of the Turkish government.[25]

The CIA and P2 connection

Another plot sees the involvement of the CIA and the Italian masonic lodge Propaganda Due led by Licio Gelli who wrote, in a telegram to Philip Guarino, that "the Swedish tree will be felled".[26] [27] [28]

Other theories

John Ausonius, "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.

Trowbridge H Ford, a former US army intelligence agent now living in Stockholm, among other bloggers, theorizes that Palme, as the UN mediator seeking an end to the Iran-Iraq war, was assassinated because he fell afoul of Iran-Contra.

Figures

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.

See also

Sources

References

  1. ↑ The investigation committee report (1999:88), p. 161. Archived 2 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. (PDF) (Swedish)
  2. ↑ The investigation committee report (1999:88), p. 162. Archived 2 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. (PDF) (Swedish)
  3. ↑ The investigation committee report (1999:88), p. 159 Archived 2 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. (PDF) (Swedish)
  4. ↑ The investigation committee report (1999:88), p. 173 Archived 2 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. (PDF) (Swedish)
  5. ↑ The investigation committee report (1999:88), p. 151-152. Archived 2 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. (PDF) (Swedish)
  6. ↑ Tagesson, Pelle (24 November 2006). "Här är de två heta vapnen" [Here are the two weapons]. Aftonbladet (in Swedish). Retrieved 9 January 2011.
  7. ↑ Wadendal, Ia; Kihlström, Staffan (20 October 2002). "Mordvapnet kan vara funnet" [The murder weapon could be found]. Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  8. ↑ Nordstrom, Louise (21 November 2006). "Swedish Police Recover Revolver Linked to Palme Murder Investigation". The America's Intelligence Wire. Associated Press. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  9. ↑ "Swedish Police Unable to Confirm Link Between Recovered Gun and Palme Murder Investigation". International Herald Tribune. Associated Press. 27 May 2007.
  10. ↑ Hufelschulte, Josef (16 January 2011). "Heiße Spur im Mordfall Palme". Focus (in German). Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  11. ↑ Sundell, Camilla (17 January 2011). "Tyska medier: Nya uppgifter om Palme-mordet" [German media: New information on the Palme murder]. Aftonbladet (in Swedish). Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  12. ↑ SOU 2002:87 Rikets säkerhet och den personliga integriteten, Swedish Government Official Report, p. 239
  13. ↑ Borgnäs, Lars; Bresky, Tomas (28 February 2006). "Filmen om mordet på Palme ett moraliskt haveri av SVT" [The film about the murder of Palme, a moral breakdown of SVT]. Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  14. ↑ http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/southafrica.html Archived 9 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  15. ↑ Daley, Suzanne (29 September 1996). "Did Apartheid's Police Murder Sweden's Prime Minister?". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  16. 1 2 Sweden Vs Apartheid: Putting Morality Ahead of Profit, Abdul Karim Bangura, Ashgate, 2004, page 115
  17. ↑ "Devil Incarnate: A Depraved Mercenary's Lifelong Swathe of Destruction; by Wayne Thallon". Amazon. Retrieved 3 August 2010.
  18. ↑ "Efterlyst interview with Tommy Lindström" (in Swedish). TV3. 8 September 2010. Retrieved 9 September 2010.
  19. ↑ "Ny bog: Chilensk fascistleder myrdede Olof Palme". Politiken (in Danish). 29 February 2008. Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  20. ↑ Knapp, Klaus-Dieter (24 February 1995). "Der Polizei auf der Spur". Die Zeit (in German) (9): 13–15.
  21. ↑ "Ocalan denies role in key rebel actions, Palme assassination". Retrieved 28 February 2016.
  22. ↑ "Ocalan questioned over Swedish murder". BBC News. 5 April 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  23. ↑ Dolmaci, Emine (7 September 2008). "Apo, Ergenekon'un Truva Ati". Zaman Pazar (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 12 September 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  24. 1 2 "Did Kurd Rebels Kill Olof Palme?". CBS News. Associated Press. 28 April 1998. Retrieved 23 July 2015.
  25. ↑ http://so.firatajans.com/guncel/isvec-palme-cinayeti-icin-kurtlerden-ozur-dilemeli[]
  26. ↑ "L'albero svedese sarà abbattuto", from a telegram by Licio Gelli to Philip Guarino, from the hearing of Ennio Remondino in the parliamentary inquiry commission about Italian terrorism and the causes behind the unsuccessful identification of the massacre's guilty party, 72nd session, 4 July 2000 (president Giovanni Pellegrino)
  27. ↑ "Licio Gelli coinvolto nell'omicidio Palme" (in Italian). la Repubblica. 1 May 1990. Retrieved 28 August 2015. L'ipotesi di un coinvolgimento di Licio Gelli nell' omicidio di Olof Palme, il premier svedese assassinato a Stoccolma alcuni anni fa, è stata avanzata ieri dal quotidiano Dagens Nyheter. Nell' articolo, firmato da un giornalista molto noto in Svezia, Olle Alsen, si ricorda l' esistenza di un telegramma che parrebbe compromettere il capo della P2. [...] Un portavoce della commissione d' inchiesta ha commentato che la pista italiana è di estrema rilevanza.
  28. ↑ Fedrighini, Enrico (27 February 2013). "Olof Palme, un caso ancora aperto" (in Italian). Il Fatto Quotidiano. Retrieved 28 August 2015. Washington, 25 febbraio 1986, martedì. Philip Guarino, esponente del Partito Repubblicano molto vicino a George Bush senior, rilegge il messaggio che gli è stato appena recapitato; un telegramma inviato da una località remota del Sud America, una sorta di codice cifrato: “Tell our friend the Swedish palm will be felled”. La firma è di un italiano, Licio Gelli, vecchia conoscenza di Guarino; alcuni anni prima, avevano entrambi sottoscritto un affidavit a favore di un finanziere, Michele Sindona. “Informa i nostri amici che la palma svedese verrà abbattuta”.
  29. 1 2 3 DN (25 February 2006). "Palmemordet i siffror" [Palme murder in numbers]. Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 21 July 2011.
  30. ↑ Persson, Leif G.W. (1 March 2009). "Borta men inte glömda". Expressen (in Swedish). Retrieved 19 July 2010.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Olof Palme.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.