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The spot in central Stockholm were Olof Palme was killed. Photo: Wikimedia |
Today exactly twenty-five years has passed since the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered in central Stockholm.
Palme had been to a movie with his wife Lisbet this Friday night the 28th of February 1986. They had been watching the Swedish movie The Mozart brothers and were heading towards the metro when a man shot them from close distance at the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan. Olof Palme died almost instantly while the bullet only touched his wife who escaped injuries. The murder has still not been solved.
The police efforts at the night of the murder and the whole investigation have been heavily criticized. It took for example several hours before a nation wide alert was sent out and police controls at the roads out from Stockholm were not on place until the day after. The whole police organization acted very unprofessionally and naive at the time. This has lead some people to believe that the police themselves, or rather some police officers, were involved.
There have been many theories about the murder. PKK, South Africa’s secret service (this was during the Apartheid years), Yugoslavia’s secret service and the Swedish police are just a few examples.
One single person without political connections, Christer Pettersson, was convicted in the municipal court in 1989 mostly due to the testimony of Lisbet Palme. He was however acquitted in the secondary court due to lack of technical evidence. The murder weapon has for example never been found. Pettersson died in 2004 so if he was guilty, which many Swedes still believe, no one can ever be convicted.
There are however still a few police officers working with the murder investigation and the period of limitation for murder was removed a couple of years ago so it new evidence comes about and the murderer is found alive, there is still a possibility for a final conviction.
Read also: Who was Olof Palme?