Lindh killer gets life for murder

BBC ^ | 23 February 2004 | Staff

[fdsa2]

The man who admitted knifing Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in a Stockholm department store has been jailed for life for murder.

Mijailo Mijailovic had denied murder, insisting he carried out the attack because of "voices in his head".

But psychiatric tests ruled he was sane when he carried out the attack last September.

A court in Stockholm ruled on Tuesday that he was guilty of murder not manslaughter.

He will serve at least 10 years before his sentence can be reviewed.

Mijailovic had confessed to repeatedly stabbing the popular minister while she was out shopping, but insisted he did not intend to kill her.

Mijailovic was born in Sweden to Serbian parents.

[fdsa2]

Excerpts from other Swedish reporting:

- 150 000 SEK (app. 20 000 US) in damages (50 000 each to husband and sons)

- Judges unanimous, Appeal Court ready to start hearings.

From the sentence: "Mijailovics claims that he was guided by an inner voice must be left without considerations. He had the opportunity to plan the deed and attacked Anna Lindh in a deliberate and for her completely surprising way"

"He used a highly dangerous weapon, the degree of the violence and the placing and size of the cuts strongly indicate an intent to kill".

[anniegetyourgun]

Bleeding heart Swedes will probably let him out after 10 years....only to have him kill again.

[Ringman]

I doubt it. Life sentences are *usually* reviewed after
10-20 years and a revised sentence have to be approved by the government.

They have recently become more strict with these kind of pardons, and the fact that he killed a minister won't make it easier for him.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[Charles Henrickson]

Hej! to the Swedish Ping List.

[Charles Henrickson]

More information in this story:

Killer of Sweden's Lindh Is Jailed for Life
1 hour, 39 minutes ago
By Stephen Brown

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish court sentenced the self-confessed killer of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh to life in prison Tuesday, after throwing out a plea of insanity for the 25-year-old man who blames "voices" in his head.

"The deed which Mijailo Mijailovic is guilty of warrants a very severe penalty. As no mitigating circumstances have come to light, he is therefore sentenced to life in prison," said the written statement released by the Stockholm court.

The son of Serb immigrants admitted to stabbing 46-year-old mother-of-two Lindh 10 times in a frenzied attack in a Stockholm department store last September. Lindh, who had been tipped as the next prime minister, died a day later.

Mijailovic, a high school dropout with no steady job, was arrested two weeks later and confessed in January, telling the court: "I was on my way out but I took a wrong turn. I saw Anna Lindh. Then the voices came and said I should attack her. I could not resist the voices."

But after psychiatrists found he could not be acquitted on grounds of insanity, public prosecutor Agneta Blidberg said in the trial ending last week that the "violent, forceful and aggressive" attack merited a life sentence for murder.

Lindh was Sweden's most popular politician. Her ready smile, stylish blonde hair and black spectacles were high profile in the Social Democrat government's failed campaign for Sweden to adopt the euro in a referendum held three days after she died.

The attack, in a country that has still not solved the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme outside a Stockholm cinema in 1986, plunged Sweden into mourning. Red roses piled up outside NK department store and at makeshift shrines in front of euro campaign photos of her on street corners and at bus stops.

Prime Minister Goran Persson called her murder "an attack on our open society." But despite the questions raised about security, politicians in Sweden and other Nordic countries which are also relatively crime-free still rarely have bodyguards.

Defense lawyer Peter Althin has three weeks to lodge an appeal in which he may demand fresh psychiatric tests to prove that his client acted under the influence of anti-depressants and should be freed and get treatment.

Mijailovic, who sought psychiatric help shortly before the attack, was born in Sweden but lived in Serbia with his grandparents for a while as a child. He said he was carrying a knife because he felt threatened and "like a total loser."

[Charles Henrickson]

More in the AFP story:

Killer of Swedish FM gets life in prison for murder
19 minutes ago

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - The man who confessed to fatally stabbing Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh was sentenced to life in prison, more than six months after the murder plunged Sweden into deep shock.

Lindh died on September 11, a day after 25-year-old Mijailo Mijailovic attacked her while she was shopping without a bodyguard, repeatedly stabbing her in the stomach, chest and arms.

Brushing aside any lingering doubts about Mijailovic's intentions during the fatal attack, the Stockholm district court said there was no doubt that he meant to kill the popular politician.

"He used a life-threatening weapon. He held the knife with both hands when he delivered the stabs... the force was powerful. The location and the size of the stab wounds indicates that the intention was to kill," the court said in a statement.

Mijailovic, confessing to the crime in January, claimed he had heard voices in his head which made him seek out and brutally stab Lindh, but this explanation should be disregarded, the court ruled.

When establishing Mijailovic's guilt in January, the court allowed for the possibility that he might be mentally unstable and ordered psychiatric testing, which might have led to the lesser charge of manslaughter.

But the six-week probe concluded that Mijailovic was not insane, neither when he stabbed Lindh nor afterwards, which meant he knew what he was doing.

"It is beyond reasonable doubt that Mijailo Mijailovic intended to kill Anna Lindh," the court said Tuesday.

"The crime shall, on the basis of the aforementioned, be considered murder," it said. "He (Mijailovic) is therefore ... sentenced to life in prison".

Mijailovic's lawyer Peter Althin, who during the trial repeatedly demanded his client's release, has three weeks to appeal the decision.

He said on Tuesday that it was too early to say whether he would do so, and needed to speak to Mijailovic first.

But Althin insisted that the prosecution had failed to prove premeditation on the part of his client.

"It has not been shown that he meant to kill," he told journalists.

Lindh's death caused shock among Swedes who expected her to one day lead the country as prime minister and brought back painful memories of the unsolved 1986 killing of prime minister Olof Palme.

One of the prosecutors, Krister Petersson, said he was relieved that this murder case, at least, had been brought to a conclusion.

"At least now there is no new wound that needs healing," Petersson said.

"I hope that now we've solved this case and the person that committed the crime is behind bars ... perhaps some sort of trust in the system ... has been restored," he said.

As foreign minister, Lindh represented her country abroad with political ideals that were also her own personal goals -- defending democracy, human rights and equality -- values Swedes cherish and in which they take immense pride.

After the arrest of Mijailovic, two weeks after the murder, it quickly became clear that he is a tortured young man with violent tendencies, torn since childhood between his parents' roots in Serbia and his new home in Sweden.

The prosecution had argued that Mijailovic considered himself to have been subjected to injustice and abuse of power, while his view of women was akin to hatred.

In its verdict, the court described the "uncontrollable and ruthless rawness" that characterized his attack on Lindh, who was shopping for clothes with a friend in a chic Stockholm department store.

"He had the possibility to stop to think. He did not do that. Instead he rushed toward Anna Lindh and delivered as many as seven or eight stabs," it said.

The life sentence, Sweden's harshest penalty, usually translates into about 15 years behind bars, but can be longer.

Josef Zila, criminal law professor at Stockholm, said that as with all life sentences, the Swedish government would decide after seven or eight years whether to commute the life sentence, saying he expected it to be changed to 15 to 20 years.

"In practice there are no rules. Since no explanations are required for pardons or rejected pardons, every case gets a different treatment," he told AFP.

"I think Mijailovic is going to prison for a long time," he said.

[Charles Henrickson]

Krister Petersson, one of the prosecuting attorneys

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Thank you for the posts and pics.

[Charles Henrickson]

Stockholm District Court, Div. 14
Judgment, 3-23-2004
Final judgment
Crimes committed: Murder
Place in the law: 3.1 of the criminal code
Punishment: Imprisonment for life

Etc.

[ScaniaBoy]

Agree, if the appeals court doesn't overturn the verdict (which it may well do) he will have to spend a very long time in jail.

But that is only because he happened to kill a political "luvvie".

Make no mistakes, the same act committed against some of the other shoppers in NK the same day, and he would probably have been confined to a mental institution, and would have been released as soon as the doctors saw fit.

ScaniaBoy

[SegerSkriv]

A life sentence is 10 years in Sweden...so this turd would be out in 10 years other than he murdered one of the ruling class there so he might get more. Does anyone know if Swedish prisoners get to surf the net prison?

[ScaniaBoy]

Oh yes, they certainly do get to surf, and watch TV, and enjoy conjugal rights, etc.....

However, I don't think this guy will get out very quickly. Had he murdered someone not belonging to the ruling elite, he would have been considered insane (the fact that he has been treated by psychiatrists for the last 10 years should indicate something). Now, although he will appeal, he will probably have to spend at least 20 years in jail.

ScaniaBoy