Minister's killer to undergo psychiatric assessment

A Swedish court ruled today that the confessed killer of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, who said he heard voices in his head before fatally stabbing her, will undergo a psychiatric screening before any verdict is handed down.

The panel of two judges and three politically appointed jurors also said there was convincing evidence against Mijailovic, but did not go so far as to say he planned the attack on the popular politician.

“Convincing evidence has been made showing that Mijailovic has committed the act he’s charged with,” the court said in its decision.

The examination will last four to five weeks. Mijailovic will be transferred to hospital, where a team of specialists will be waiting to examine him.

“The work will start as soon as a formal request comes from the court, probably no later than Tuesday,” said Marianne Kristiansson, forensic psychiatric chief medical officer at the National Board of Forensic Medicine.

If the panel rules that Mijailovic is suffering from a severe mental illness, he would be sentenced to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison.

Mijailovic, who has three previous convictions, confessed to the attack on Lindh a week before the trial after being confronted with DNA evidence linking him to the knife used to kill her.

Lindh’s blood also was found on the clothes Mijailovic wore during the attack. Police found them hidden in a wooded area south of Stockholm.

Calling the attack on Lindh deliberate, chief prosecutor Agneta Blidberg today asked the court to sentence Mijailovic to life in prison, while his lawyer, Peter Althin, said his client was troubled by voices and on medication.

“Mijailovic admits that he has attacked with a knife and caused the injuries that led to Anna Lindh’s death,” Althin told the court in his closing arguments. “But he denies having had an intent to kill.”

Althin also said prosecutors had not proven that Mijailovic set out to kill Lindh when he went to the NK department store last September.

“The meeting with Anna Lindh was a coincidence. Nobody could know that Anna Lindh was visiting NK that day,” he said, asking the court to release him.

Blidberg maintained that the stabbing was not the result of mental confusion.

“It was no coincidence that the attack was aimed at Anna Lindh, but a deliberate act,” she said. “There are no mitigating conditions to make the crime less grave.”

Mijailovic, a Swede of Serbian origin, has said he heard voices in his head telling him to stab the popular politician, a mother of two. He testified last week that he didn’t mean to kill Lindh, and felt remorse about the assault.