VIP security under spotlight after minister's murder

Police were stepping up the search for the killer of Sweden’s foreign minister Anna Lindh, as the stunned nation debated its open security policies for government officials.

Stockholm police spokesman Leif Jennekvist said Lindh, who died yesterday, was probably the intended target of the stabbing on Wednesday, but it was believed the suspect acted in a random fit of violence.

However, it came just four days before Swedes were due to vote in a referendum on adopting the euro. Lindh was a leading campaigner for replacing the Swedish krona with the common currency – an issue that had inspired vehement opposition.

Swedish prime minister Goeran Persson said Sunday’s referendum would continue, but ordered all campaigning to stop.

“There is nothing that indicates there was any careful planning in this,” he said in Stockholm.

Police said they were searching for a stocky Swedish man with bad skin and shoulder-length dark-blond hair, possibly with a criminal record. They said he was about 30, clean-shaven and wore a hooded sweater and some kind of hat.

He stabbed Lindh, 46, in the stomach, chest and arm while she was shopping at a department store in the city. As he fled, he dropped his knife and camouflage jacket, which were recovered.

Jennekvist admitted police were in great need of clues, but said officers would find him. “That’s our job,” he said.

The attack raised concerns in Sweden and its Nordic neighbours about the openness of their countries, where it is common to see a prime minister jogging without bodyguards or police, and politicians strolling the streets with their families.

Critics said Sweden’s security agency, known as SAPO, should have learned more from the 1986 murder of prime minister Olof Palme, who was shot while walking home from a cinema with his wife. The murder has not been solved.

Like Lindh, Palme had no bodyguard.

Although security was tightened after Palme’s murder, only the prime minister and the king are afforded round-the-clock protection. Other Cabinet ministers, like Lindh, only have them when SAPO officials say they are needed.

SAPO said Lindh had no bodyguards because the agency said there were no threats made towards her.

“Of course it feels like a failure when this kind of event happens involving a person that we have the responsibility to protect,” acting SAPO chief Kurt Malmstroem said. “But whether we have made a mistake in evaluating information and other things, the future will tell.”

Malmstroem said security has been temporarily heightened around Swedish government officials.

Jerzy Sarnecki, a Stockholm University criminology professor, criticised SAPO’s judgment by pointing out that Lindh was a leading figure in the Social Democratic government’s efforts to make Swedes adopt the euro.

“To put it mildly, how the hell can you say that there wasn’t a threat in a politically inflamed situation?” he said. “That’s not the assessment I would have made.”

Tributes to Lindh poured in from around the world as Swedes mourned the politician many thought would eventually be prime minister.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Colin Powell recalled his friendship with Lindh: “She had a special energy, integrity and compassion and she spent a great deal of her time focusing her efforts in global humanitarian issues. Anna was a cherished colleague and friend, and I will miss her."

Finland’s prime minister Matti Vanhanen described the attack as “a major setback and shock” to the open societies which the Nordic countries had nurtured.

In Norway, prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik called it ”an attack on our open form of democracy”.

“We have to be more watchful, but I feel safe,” he told Norwegian radio network NRK. “If we close ourselves in, we will lose some of the openness of our Nordic societies.”