'Nothing less than murder'
2004-01-09 13:58
Stockholm - The self-confessed killer of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh will be charged with murder, chief prosecutor Agneta Blidberg told Swedish media Friday.
"This will be classified as murder and nothing else," Blidberg told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.
The official charge against Mijailo Mijailovic won't be brought until next Monday, and the trial is set to begin two days later.
On Tuesday this week, the 25-year-old Swede of Serbian origin confessed to fatally stabbing Lindh last September, but his lawyer, Peter Althin has repeatedly stated that the killing was a random act of violence, and that it had no political motive.
"What I can say is that the crime was not planned," he told the press earlier this week. "Rather, one can say that it was random combined with a number of circumstances."
While Althin appears to be gearing up for a involuntary manslaughter charge, Blidberg told Dagens Nyheter that there didn't appear to be any extenuating circumstances in this case that would lead prosecutors to charge Mijailovic with anything less than murder.
"There is absolutely no reason why prosecutors would include any alternative classifications," she said.
Lindh was stabbed on September 10 while shopping for clothes in a Stockholm department store. She was without a bodyguard at the time of the attack.
Her death, the next day, sent shock waves through Sweden, where she had been tipped as a future prime minister.
According to information leaked from Mijailovic's confession, he claimed that he had spotted Lindh inside the department store, and a voice inside his head ordered him to attack her.
"No time passed. Only a matter of seconds," he is reported as saying.
Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, however, reported on Friday that Mijailovic had in fact followed Lindh into the department store and had trailed her for 14 minutes before fatally stabbing her.
"He followed her. There are pictures from inside the department store that show that he kept her under surveillance," an anonymous police source told the paper.
"He spent his time getting ready, finding a good opportunity. If this had been a spontaneous act, he would have stabbed her at the entrance," the police source added.
- AFP