Something of a mystery: Who killed Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme?

There are many murders that are restricted against an unknown person and many years have passed since they were committed without reasoning or knowing the perpetrator .. Victims may be ordinary citizens, artists, known personalities, and even politicians ..

The gas eluded the investigators, the police and the governments, that it is unfortunate that the criminal does not receive the punishment he deserves by what his hands committed.
The hero of our story for today is one of the well-known politicians in the modern history of Sweden, that he is the former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme Born on January 30, 1927, a seasoned politician, has been the leader of the Social Democratic Action Party since 1969 and the Prime Minister of Sweden between 1969-1976 .

Olof is famous for his bold stances and his extreme frankness regarding many international issues at the time, such as peace, democracy, international understanding and common security
He was a pivotal and polarized person at home as well as in international politics since the 1960s
He was of the opinion and seemed to be tweeting outside the Western Squadron by adhering to the policy of non-alignment towards the great powers and his support for many of the third world liberation movements after decolonization, as well as economic and explicit support for a number of third world governments.

He was the first Western Prime Minister to visit Cuba after the revolution in which it took place under the leadership of Castro.
He delivered a speech in the Chilean capital, Santiago, praising the Cuban and Cambodian revolutionaries.

I criticize the American foreign and Soviet politics often, and resorted to intense criticism and often in determining his resistance to imperialist ambitions and authoritarian regimes including those developed by Francesco Franco, the dictator of Spain, as well as Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, dictator of Portugal and Gustav Hosak is the head of the Communist Czechoslovakia and the apartheid regime in South Africa..
His condemnation of Hanoi's bombing in Vietnam on the eve of Christmas in 1972 by the US Air Force caused a temporary freeze in relations between Sweden and the United States.
He was behaving like an ordinary citizen and not as president and leader of a country.

It is also known about Palme that he is a left-wing character who knew about her support for all liberation movements, especially the Palestinian issue, and knew his close relations with the late President Saddam Hussein, Cuban President Fidel Castro and the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who extended an official invitation to him to visit Stockholm in 1983, which sparked the anger and frustration of the Israelis  Back then.

He began his political activity in 1953 and was elected a member of Parliament in 1957
He became a member of the International Assistance Agency in the early 1960s
He became a member of the Council of Ministers in 1963
He became Minister of Transport and Communications in 1965
Palme was elected as the new leader of the Social Democratic Party when the party leader resigned in 1969 and succeeded him as prime minister

Although he was prime minister, he sought to live an ordinary life as possible and often went out without any protection or personal guards?
On the night of February 28, 1986, at 11:21 minutes before midnight, while returning home after he went to the movies, he and his wife Lisbeth Palmeh were walking without protection on Svivagen Street in the Stockhelum Center, the couple was attacked by a gunman from behind by an armed person.

He was shot in the back by a shot, and his wife was also shot, and the murderer escaped.

An out-of-duty policeman witnessed the accident and immediately reported the crime over his radio. Two girls who were in a car near the scene tried to help Palme and took him to the hospital, but it was too late to announce his death at 6 am.

The news of the death of a thunderbolt shocked the Swedes at the time, as this peaceful country did not know such crimes previously .. The whole country was in shock

The policemen were severely criticized for not doing their job properly and in a state of shock, they did not surround the crime scene properly, but rather closed a very small area in the city center.
The mourners were allowed to enter the scene, which was still stained with blood.
Witnesses also left the scene of the accident even before they were interrogated.
The shots fired by the murderer were found on Palmeh only after the days of his coincidence passed by a bystander!

Who is the murderer?

Despite the large number of witnesses, the police had only a few leads, and the criminal doctor explained that the bullets found indicated that the killer used a magnum pistol, which is a very powerful weapon. Even if he was a mother wearing a bullet-proof vest, he would have been killed with one bullet From that weapon. Accordingly, whoever killed his mother was determined to kill him and it was not a passing matter, but was planned with full care.

The chief investigator in that case raised the idea that the PKK, which was fighting a guerrilla war against the government in Turkey, was killed by a death, because the Palma government announced at the time that the party had classified a terrorist movement, but no evidence was found linking the party to the crime


In 1988 the police arrested Christer Peterson, who had criminal records, as he killed a man on a Stockholm street who stabbed his military war in 1970 without reason.
Peterson's specifications matched a person who was seen behaving strangely and suspiciously near the movie theater on that night he was killed by a mother.

During the presentation of the faces of the suspects at the police station, a wife of Palme distinguished the face of Christer Peterson and said that he was the one who shot her husband, Fadin, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989, but his lawyer appealed the ruling on the pretext of insufficient evidence, especially the fact that the crime weapon was never found, as well as questioning testimony  A wife of his mother, he was able to obtain the innocence of his client, and the court released him after only three months of his prison sentence, and he also granted him about 50 thousand euros in compensation, which he quickly wasted on drugs and alcohol, but he continued to obtain a good income for the rest of his life through TV and press interviews .. Interviews described as a cat and mouse game, where he was tempted by journalists with statements that were almost in recognition of the crime, so that some politicians applied for a new trial, but the court found once again insufficient evidence to open the case, and Peterson defended himself, saying that his statements were only a way to obtain it Money from journalists.

Peterson died of a stroke in 2004 and is free to loose.

The killing of a mother and the non-arrest of the criminal caused the emergence of dozens of theories, which increased the Swedish obsession with conspiracy theories, so that the term Palma Sugokdom, any obsession with the mouth, became a vocabulary of Swedish culture.

 

Did the apartheid regime in South Africa have a role in his death?

There were other suspects in the killing of a mother, one of whom was named Victor Jureenson, who immigrated to the United States after the crime and was mysteriously killed there in 1993.

A former officer of the apartheid regime in South Africa claimed in 1996 that South African intelligence was behind the killing of a mother because of his anti-apartheid stance and his funding for the African National Congress Party. Swedish investigators traveled to South Africa to meet this officer, but they did not obtain any compelling evidence.

Dr. Bondison believes that the crime may have been linked to arms deals with India held by the Swedish arms company Boverus to supply India with artillery in the 1980s and 1990s, but later discovered that the company bribed many brokers in India for the deal and it was a scandal involving Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, according to Dr Bondison may have discovered that Boverus was corrupt on the same night as his murder, and this gives the deal brokers a strong reason for his killing, and this is something the police ignored from the start.

 
Stig Insgrum .. One of the most suspects in the case

One of the strongest suspects was called Stig Insgrum, and he was called the Scandia Man (a famous financial institution in Sweden with headquarters near the crime scene). He was a painter and has links to the New Moderates Party in Sweden, which adopts a liberal line today but it was a conservative national party during the days of his death.

Stig Ingstrom was one of about 20 people who witnessed the assassination and committed suicide in 2000

An investigation by Swedish journalist Thomas Peterson, which took 12 years for the first time, revealed Ingstrom as a suspect, claiming that he had received weapons training and was a friend of a man who owned a group of weapons and was fascinated by magnum pistols
It turned out later that he lied about what he had done at the crime scene, where he claimed that he tried to perform a ventilator to his pain to save him and was not honest about that .

 

Many Swedes believe that Insgrum will be used as a scapegoat to close the case, especially as he is dead.

In the end, the issue remains a great mystery unresolved to this day .. Who killed by a mother and why . .. This mystery remained engraved in the minds of Swedes, and it was difficult to solve it for their former and current investigators.

Sources :

- Olof Palme - Wikipedia
- Olof Palme murder: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986
- Stig Engström
- Five theories: Who killed Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme

 

 

By: Majed HSSAINI

hssainimajed@gmail.com