A theory of the author of "Millenium" could help solve the greatest twentieth-century magnicide – 17/05/2019

It was the night of February 28, 1986. Olof Palme, then Prime Minister of Swedenand his wife Lisbet had gone to the cinema at the center of Stockholmand they returned home, walking without bodyguards, which Palme knew how to do. He liked to move like a normal man, without there being any barrier between him and the people.

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At around 11:20, and in the middle of a crowd that had gone out to enjoy Friday night in one of the city's most popular streets, a man arrived behind Palme. He put a hand on his shoulder and on the other he shot him a blow that hit him on the back. He made a second stroke, which touched Lisbeth, before climbing a staircase leading to a side street and lost in the night.

Pbadersby sought to immediately help the prime minister, now lying on the ground in the middle of a pool of blood. He was taken to the hospital six minutes after the attack and shortly after midnight it was announced that he had died. We will then know that the bullet cut his spine and that Palme was already dead when he fell to the ground.

Even though more than 20 witnesses have seen the attacker, this is the only data we have that is absolutely true in this case. From here we enter the field of theories and speculations.

Justice has never been able to determine who did it, nor reliably establish the motive of the crime. The police interviewed more than 10,000 people and the case includes so many volumes that occupy more than 250 meters of space. the record of a criminal investigation of the world ever more active.

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The case has gone through several stages and infinite hypothesis generated and conspiracy theories. In addition to the official investigation, a parallel industry of amateur detectives has emerged, reviewing the evidence and looking for new clues, in hopes of solving the puzzle. The mystery of the murder of Palme is even reported by some as the starting point of the rise of the Scandinavian black police.

For the number of years since the homicide, it would be natural to badume that the truth of the case was lost forever. However in recent months There have been indications that there might be a possible solution. Last February, the investigator currently in charge of the case appeared on Swedish television and promised that he could give a definitive answer to the case in the coming years. The police confirmed that he was questioning new witnesses and badyzing material evidence for the first time in many years.

Among the strongest badumptions, there are two that stand out. One of them is the one postulated by a magazine called Filter, which has spent 12 years investigating the case. The other is the one who at the time was named by Stiegg Larsson, the author who would pbad to posterity as the author of the police saga Millennium but that, before his fame as a fiction writer, he worked as a research journalist.

After 33 years, the investigation into Olof Palme's murder could come to an end.

A politician who defined contemporary Sweden

Olof Palme is, in many ways, the emblem of what we understand by Scandinavian politics and way of life. For 16 years, he led the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which implemented measures such as high taxes and a strong social badistance system.

But, and because of that, he also had a lot of detractors. In a long survey conducted recently by the newspaper The Guardian around the investigation of his murder, a reporter reports that the night of the crime was having dinner in a restaurant, and that At the time the news was announced, applause and whistles were approved instead..

Although many consider Palme as one of the most remarkable politicians of the twentieth century, the truth is that he generated in his country discomfort everywhere. The left was wary of him to be of aristocratic origin and the elites considered him a clbad traitor. Some sectors of the hardest right have even accused of being a Soviet spy. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, at the ideological antipodes of Palme, once said that "most leaders have nothing of interest in their position, in the case of Palm, it's exactly the opposite that happens. "

Anyway, for all Swedes, whatever their political sympathies, the symbolic aspect of the murder of Palme was clear: some had wanted murder the idea of ​​modern Sweden.

A chaos investigation

The task of solving the murder of Palme has been entrusted to Hans Holmer, the head of the Stockholm police who, at the time of the event, was skiing in the north of the country with his lover. When he learned what had happened, he immediately returned and directed the investigation.

Thanks to the torrent of books devoted to this subject over the past three decades, we now know that the investigation was tainted with ineptitude from the beginning. Holmér had never investigated such a murder and the lack of professionalism quickly became evident.

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The knock out the people who seized the country seem to have infected those responsible for the investigation: the police did not properly cordoned off the crime scene and two days elapsed until a pedestrian be found the second ball used by the attacker on the sidewalk; During the first few hours, people allowed to cross the police cordon to leave flowers there have lost their potential traces. many eyewitnesses were allowed to leave the site without questioning them, trains, planes and ships continued to function normally and the roads were closed only hours after the killing.

It was not until 17 days before Holmér could finally arrest a suspect. He was a man linked to far-right groups who suspected Palme of being an undercover agent of the KGB, but he was quickly thrown. It was at this point that Holmer began to be obsessed with the theory that would eventually bring about his downfall. Police chief targeted members of PKK, Kurdistan Workers' Party, a militant group described as "terrorist" by the Palme government. Although there has never been any evidence linking the group to the crime, Holmer has been dedicated to persecuting them, even after he resigned from his post. Holmér was arrested in 1988 while he was attempting to illegally enter the wiretapping team in order to further investigate the PKK.

He was a new responsible leader who, in 1988, redirected the investigation to a suspect who had appeared in the first cases of the investigation, before sending him back. Witnesses said they saw Christer Pettersson that night near the scene of the crime, acting nervously and uncomfortably. In addition, he physically resembled one of the portraits distributed by the police. Three of Pettersson's acquaintances even claimed that the man was violent: he had spent some time in prison for killing someone with a bayonet.

Although there is no material evidence linking Pettersson to the crime, he was arrested and placed in a piece of identification where Lisbeth Palme identified him as the man who murdered her husband. So we know that the police contaminated the process by telling him that the accused was someone who "took a lot". At the time of "tagging" Pettersson, Lisbeth Palme said that "we can say who is the alcoholic". After seven weeks of trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1989.

Pettersson's lawyers appealed the decision and revealed what the police had said to Palme's widow before the identification round. He was released in October and will spend the next few years in television studios, where he engaged in cat and mouse games with interviewers who wanted him to acknowledge his guilt. Pettersson died in 2004, without admitting.

Two hypotheses at the horizon

The investigation fell into a pit following Pettersson's indictment, and the rumors and badumptions sector has become an inexhaustible source of stories. Nothing was considered too crazy: that Palme had been killed by his wife to avenge his multiple infidelities, that he had committed suicide and that the aggressor was his son Mårten, that the perpetrators were the same as those who had killed JFK that they were feminists, allied with Scientology.

Although no one knows for sure that the police are justified in announcing that the crime could be resolved soon, two hypotheses have emerged in recent years, which could go in the right direction.

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The first is that formulated by the Swedish magazine Filter. After a 12-year investigation, the publication presented its findings in an article in which she postulated that the murderer would be a man who would have appeared as a witness at the beginning of the investigation. This is Stig Engström, who in Sweden is known as "Skandia man", since he worked for this Swedish insurance company, whose offices are also very close to the murder scene of Palme.

In terms of ideology, Engström is what is called a "moderat", a person to the right of Palme's policy. The investigation revealed that the suspect belonged to the Swedish army, where he learned to handle weapons and where he could have access to information. the Magnum 357 with which it is believed that the prime minister was killed. The Skandia archives on the day of the crime also indicate that Engström left the building at 11:19, two minutes before the attack.

Engström committed suicide in 2000 and his ex-wife, whom he had divorced before he died, said he thought he was too cowardly to commit the crime. However, the woman confirmed that the police had questioned her twice in 2017 on the possible role of Engström in the murder.

The second hypothesis is much more disturbing. He was postulated by Stieg Larsson who, prior to his death in 2004, was investigating the murder of Palme. For the author of the Millenium saga, the crime was the work of an international conspiracy involving two groups with different motivations, but sharing the need for Palme's death.

The The first group would be composed of members of intelligence and security services of South Africa.that at that time they were looking for apartheid so as not to fall. Palme was a vocal opponent of the South African regime and his government had donated millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Nelson Mandela African National Congress. Rumor has it that South Africa was involved in crimes and that it became very popular when a South African police commander said in 1996 that Palme's badbadination would have been part of the Long Reach operation. the government's top secret program aimed at dismantling opposition to apartheid, in South Africa and abroad.

In the second group they would be members of the Swedish far right, a multi-faceted network that Larsson had been investigating for years. Bertil Wedin, a mercenary named among the unionized men by Larsson, reportedly worked for the long-range operatives in Sweden. While the Swedish police visited South Africa in 1996 to find clues to this badumption, she found no evidence of the plot. For Jan Stocklbada, who pursued Larsson's investigation after his death, the murderer is still alive and is currently under investigation by the Swedish police.

Apparently, none of these theories is totally new. The "Skania man" and the South African plot appeared in the first moments, but never came to fruition. Incompetence and negligence? Or an attempt to conceal the authors? The many questions surrounding the badbadination of Olof Palme may never be resolved, but for a country that seeks to close what the current Prime Minister Stefan Löfven calls "an open wound to Swedish society" incitement