New probe into Swedish PM assassination

Swedish police are to re-question some witnesses in the unsolved case of the 1986 murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme after new information emerged in a TV documentary, the lead investigator said today.

Palme was gunned down on the way home from a Stockholm cinema on February 28, 20 years ago.

The only man tried for the murder, an alcoholic and drug addict named Christer Pettersson, was acquitted on appeal after police failed to produce any technical evidence against him. Pettersson died in 2004.

In a documentary aired on Sunday by public broadcaster SVT, one of Pettersson’s friends, Roger Ostlund, said he saw Pettersson shoot Palme, but that the prime minister had been mistaken for a local drug dealer who was the real target.

Ostlund had previously told prosecutors that both he and Pettersson were in the area at the time of the murder. But he had never mentioned before that he witnessed the actual murder.

“We have to follow up on this,” lead Palme investigator Stig Edqvist said. “This is completely new information and we have a new murder witness.”

Edqvist declined to assess how reliable the new information was. He would not say who would be questioned, but said investigators had to act quickly.

Ostlund is suffering from cancer, according to the documentary.

Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the murder on Tuesday, Palme’s family and friends lamented that his political legacy is still clouded by conspiracy theories surrounding the murder.

“It just goes on and on. Of course it overshadows my father’s contributions, which are not mentioned,” his son, Marten Palme, said last week.

Palme’s killer fled into a dark alley after shooting him in the back. Police are still searching for the assassin, the motive and the gun. A £3.6m (€5.3m) reward for information leading to a conviction still stands, as does the guessing game surrounding the murder.

The outspoken Palme had enemies both at home and abroad. In 1972, he led an anti-war parade in Stockholm arm-in-arm with communist North Vietnam’s ambassador to Sweden, leading the US to briefly recall its ambassador.

He railed against apartheid and against the Soviet invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia.

In the early 1980s, he angered Kurdish militants when his government branded their independence group, the PKK, a terrorist organisation.

He tried to mediate in the Iran-Iraq war, but angered Tehran by threatening to block any secret Swedish arms sales to Iran.

Palme had just left a movie theatre with his wife, Lisbet, and as was his custom on private occasions, had given his bodyguards the night off.

The couple were walking along a snowy street in central Stockholm, when witnesses say the killer suddenly approached Palme, put his arm around him, and shot him with a .357 Magnum revolver.

The killer also fired a bullet that grazed Palme’s wife, before escaping up a stairway at the end of an alley.

There the trail ends.

Pettersson, who had been singled out as the assassin by Lisbet Palme, died in 2004 of brain hemorrhaging and organ failure. Many believe the truth about the murder was buried with him.

“I am convinced that Pettersson was guilty,” Marten Palme said. “In practicality, I have put that behind me.”

Still, amateur detectives and journalists have come up with an impressive list of theories – Kurdish terrorists, South Africa’s apartheid-era government, the CIA, arms-traders and even the Swedish police.

More than 500,000 documents related to the murder fill several rooms at the Stockholm police headquarters. More than 20,000 tips have been received and processed. Fourteen investigators are still working on the case, although not full-time.