Twist in Lindh killer case

2004-01-20 11:30

Stockholm - Swedish police are investigating a possible link between the confessed killer of foreign minister Anna Lindh, Mijailo Mijailovic, and the murder of a pensioner.

Swedish daily Expressen reports that police are speculating whether Mijailovic may have been involved in the stabbing of 77-year-old Nils Bergman in the southwestern Stockholm suburb of Skärholmen on November 14 2002.

Bergman, the newspaper reported, was on his way home from church, where he had been playing in a pensioners' band, when he was stabbed.

The crime scene is situated less than one kilometre from Solna, the area Mijailovic fled to by taxi after stabbing Lindh in a department store in the city centre on September 10 2003.

The taxi driver who drove Mijailovic from the scene of Lindh's stabbing, Norretin Kanat, told a court on Monday that, during the 40-minute taxi ride, which Mijailovic spent sitting in the front seat, his "impression was that he was a little tired, a little slow, a little shy".

The cabbie also testified that, on asking whether Mijailovic wanted to go to Skärholmen, the man reacted in a strange way.

"When I said Skärholmen I then saw ... he totally changed colour. He reacted to Skärholmen."

The court decided on Monday that Mijailovic will undergo a psychiatric screening before any verdict is handed down in the Lindh case.

The decision, made by a panel of two judges and three politically-appointed jurors after they heard closing arguments earlier in the morning, also said there was convincing evidence against Mijailovic, but didn't go so far as to say he planned the attack on the popular politician.

"Convincing evidence has been made showing that Mijailovic has committed the act he's charged with," the court said in its decision.

The examination will last four to five weeks. Mijailovic will be transferred to Huddinge hospital, where a team of specialists will examine him.

"The work will start as soon as a formal request comes from the court, probably no later than Tuesday," said Marianne Kristiansson, forensic psychiatric chief medical officer at the National Board of Forensic Medicine.

If the panel rules that Mijailovic is suffering from a severe mental illness, he would be sentenced to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison.

Mijailovic, who has three previous convictions, confessed to the attack on Lindh a week before the trial, after being confronted with DNA evidence linking him to the knife used to kill her.

Lindh's blood also was found on the clothes Mijailovic wore during the attack. Police found them hidden in a wooded area south of Stockholm.

Mijailovic, a Swede of Serbian origin, has said he heard voices in his head telling him to stab the popular politician, a mother of two. He testified last week that he didn't mean to kill Lindh, and felt remorse about the assault.

- AP