Life for killer of Anna Lindh (original) (raw)

The man who confessed to stabbing Sweden's popular foreign minister, Anna Lindh, in a Stockholm department store was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday.

Mijailo Mijailovic, aged 25, claimed that "voices in his head", including that of Jesus, told him to attack Ms Lindh, who had been thought likely to be the country's next prime minister.

The killing, last September, cast a shadow over Sweden's euro referendum, which the social democratic government lost by a narrow margin three days later. Ms Lindh, aged 46 and a mother of two, had been a key figure in the Swedish campaign to join the European single currency and detectives had initially thought the killing was politically motivated.

Mijailovic, the son of Serb immigrants and a school dropout, confessed to stabbing her repeatedly as she was shopping unguarded with a friend at the NK department store in the capital. But he insisted he had not meant to kill her.

The attack stunned Swedes, who held candlelit vigils outside the store in scenes reminiscent of those after the death of Princess Diana in Britain. There were also comparisons with the still unsolved murder of the social democratic prime minister Olof Palme outside a cinema in 1986, and troubling questions about security in a relatively crime-free country where even senior politicians rarely have bodyguards.

Yesterday's ruling had been expected after the Stockholm district court had earlier rejected a request to sentence the defendant to psychiatric care.

The court said Mijailovic, who was convicted of murder, knew what he was doing.

"It was very much expected, it couldn't have gone any other way," Christopher Diesen, a law professor at Stockholm University, told Associated Press. "There were no extenuating circumstances."

Defence lawyer Peter Althin said he had not decided whether he would appeal against the verdict and sentence, but he has three weeks to do so. Mr Althin had argued that Mijailovic was mentally unstable and under heavy medication during the attack.

"I'm not interested in politics," Mijailovic told the court. "It could have been someone other than Anna Lindh. I have nothing personal against Anna Lindh."

He said he was "feeling really bad and hadn't slept for days" before the incident.

Mijailovic was arrested two weeks after the stabbing. He denied involvement for months, but confessed after being confronted with overwhelming evidence, including a DNA analysis carried out by British forensic experts, linking him to the murder weapon - a craftsman's knife found at the scene.

He was also ordered to pay £11,000 in damages to Ms Lindh's husband, Bo Holmberg, and their two sons.

Swedes were horrified at the parallels with the Palme case, especially as the days immediately after the attack failed to yield any solid leads. A first suspect was arrested after a week but later released due to lack of evidence.

Mijailovic, who has three previous convictions, was arrested at his home in a Stockholm suburb.

A coroner told the court that the foreign minister had been stabbed at least seven times, with the fatal blow piercing her liver.

Some experts suggested that Mijailovic was obsessed by famous people and may have hated Ms Lindh for backing Nato bombing raids during the Kosovo war in 1999.

According to one psychiatric evaluation, Mijailovic said he was interested in "injustices in the world", but he was unable to elaborate.