Posted on 01/12/2004 8:59:31 PM PST by Charles Henrickson
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Mijailo Mijailovic, who goes on trial on Wednesday for the murder of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh, is a tortured young man torn since childhood between Sweden and Serbia and bearing a history of violence.
The 25-year old's confusion goes as far as believing that his actions are dictated by divine voices.
Born in Sweden of Serb immigrant parents, Mijailovic was at the age of six sent to Serbia, where he lived, with his mother and sister, in his grandparent's house in Mladenovac, near Belgrade.
His father worked in Stockholm, sending his wages to his family.
As an adolescent, at 13, Mijailovic returned to Sweden but showed signs of being profoundly disturbed by his lack of roots, and of finding it hard to adapt. He was not helped by a violent and alcoholic father.
Nevertheless, the shy and taciturn boy was a good student, but seemed to develop a fascination with knives, making drawings of many knife types on his exercise books.
At age 17, in 1996, he attacked his father with a kitchen knife.
Following the attack, and four similar incidents involving illegal possession of arms, death threats and violence, Swedish judges ordered him to undergo psychiatric treatment.
According to friends and relatives, he took a certain pride in his weaknesses, and flaunted his habitual use of drugs, including powerful sleeping tablets, which he took without a doctor's prescription.
"It's hopeless, I'm a mental case", he is reported to have told a girl who threatenend to call the police after he stalked her and her sister for four years.
Following the crime, he knocked on the doors of several psychiatric institutions, but was turned back due to lack of places. "Countless times" he asked for psychiatric help over the past four years, his mother told Swedish daily Aftonbladet.
Her son, who made a living from unskilled jobs in restaurants and building sites, was particularly depressed in the weeks preceding the fatal attack, and not sleeping properly, she said.
"I know he hears voices. This does not happen to people in good health," she said. "He often said 'Somebody is talking to me'," she said.
Mijailovic himself told police as he confessed to the killing: "I think it was Jesus, that he has chosen me."
An "inner voice" told him to attack Lindh when he entered the NK department store where she was clothes shopping without bodyguards, he said.
"One can't resist the voices, one can't manage to stand up to them. They are a real pain when they come," he told police.
But investigators have ruled out the possibility of an act dictated by temporary madness, believing instead that he had every intention of killing the popular foreign minister.
Mijailovic himself claims that he had no political motive, but witnesses have told Swedish newspapers that he "hated Anna Lindh", and never forgave her for her backing of NATO airstrikes against Belgrade in 1999.
"He was very affected when Lindh said that it was OK to bomb Serbia," during the war in Kosovo, a friend of Mijailovic told Aftonbladet.
"He's a patriot. Serbia before everything else. He wanted to participate in the war when he was 15 years old," the friend added.
Until Tuesday last week, Mijailovic had denied having anything to do with the fatal attack against Lindh in a Stockholm department store on September 10.
Swedish prosecutor Agneta Blidberg talks to the media about the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh at a press conference in Stockholm, January 12, 2004. The man who has confessed to killing Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in September stabbed her several times with a knife, saying Jesus told him to do so, police said. 'He says he did not have a political motive and that it happened all of a sudden. That is his version,' Chief Prosecutor Agneta Blidberg told reporters.
Swedish head prosecutor Agneta Blidberg (C) is mobbed by the media as she holds investigation material in Stockholm. Blidberg charged Mijailo Mijailovic, the self-confessed killer of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, with her murder 12 January, setting the stage for his trial later this week.
Picture of the 1,120-page head protocol on the Anna Lindh murder case in Stockholm. The text on top in Swedish reads, 'Preliminary investigation concerning the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh'.
Police lead investigator Leif Jennekvist (R) speaks to reporters in Stockholm. Swedish head prosecutor Agneta Blidberg today charged Mijailo Mijailovic, the self-confessed killer of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, with her murder 12 January, setting the stage for his trial later this week.
A police handout photograph released on January 12, 2004, shows the jacket that Swedish police say Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was wearing at the time of the attack in September, 2003. The man who has confessed to killing Lindh stabbed her several times with a knife, saying Jesus told him to do so, police said on Monday.
That's the way I read it, too. The "hearing voices" defense. There's plenty of evidence that he hated Lindh for political reasons, ever since her support for the bombing of Serbia. I think he's trying to take advantage of the soft Swedish judicial system.
A police handout photograph released on January 12, 2004, shows the knife that Swedish police say was used to murder Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in September, 2003.
By Anna Peltola
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The man who has confessed to killing Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in September stabbed her several times with a knife, saying Jesus told him to do so, police said on Monday.
Mijailo Mijailovic confessed last week to the attack -- having denied until then any involvement since his arrest on September 24 -- but told prosecutors and his defense lawyer the deed had been unplanned and lacked political motive.
Prosecutors charged the 25-year-old Mijailovic with murder on Monday, saying solid forensic evidence tied him to the murder weapon, a knife with a 10-cm (four-inch) blade, and the victim.
"He says he did not have a political motive and that it happened all of a sudden. That is his version," Chief Prosecutor Agneta Blidberg told reporters.
Mijailovic told police he knew who he was stabbing, but that he had had nothing personal against Lindh, a 46-year-old mother of two tipped as Sweden's next prime minister.
"It was a coincidence that I happened to see her," he said according to the police hearing protocol. "It could also have been someone else."
Mijailovic, a high-school drop-out who had sought psychiatric help before the attack, said inner voices had spoken to him in the language of his parents from former Yugoslavia, where he spent part of his childhood and early youth.
"They told me to stab."
Asked to whom the voices belonged, Mijailovic said: "I think it is Jesus. That he has chosen me."
Mijailovic goes on trial on Wednesday and faces between 10 years and life in prison if convicted for murder.
Leif Jennekvist, the Stockholm police commissioner who led the murder investigation, told reporters Mijailovic made up his mind to kill Lindh during the approximately 14 minutes from the time he saw her enter the central Stockholm department store on September 10 and the deed.
Linnea Arvidsson, manager of the department store boutique where Lindh was slain, told police she witnessed the attack at close range and heard the assailant say words to the effect of, "You got what you deserved."
After the stabbing Mijailovic dropped the knife. Police later also found his cap and trousers. Asked what she thought had been the decisive moment in the investigation, Blidberg said: "Maybe when we found Anna Lindh's blood on his trousers."
Foreign Minister Anna Lindh of Sweden in Budapest, Hungary, in this May 30, 2001 photo.
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writer
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A man charged Monday with the stabbing death of popular Foreign Minister Anna Lindh said voices in his head told him to kill her. His confession painted a litany of mental confusion that could ultimately send him to the psychiatric hospital instead of prison.
Prosecutors, however, contend they have enough evidence to send Mijailo Mijailovic to prison for life.
Mijailovic, 25, told prosecutors he didn't know who told him to kill Lindh.
"I think it is Jesus. That he has chosen me," according to a transcript of the Jan. 6 confession that was released Monday. In it, Mijailovic said he recognized Lindh, but that the attack was random.
Police investigator Leif Jennekvist, however, said the attack was premeditated and that the evidence left only "microscopic" chances of an acquittal.
"It shows that Mijailovic is the right man," Jennekvist said.
Prosecutors said Mijailovic stabbed Lindh, touted as a future prime minister, 10 times in her chest, stomach and arms as she was shopping at a Stockholm department store with a friend and without a bodyguard. The 46-year-old politician died from her injuries a day later, plunging the country into shock and mourning.
Investigators claim Lindh's blood was found on Mijailovic's clothes and on the craftsman's knife he used to stab her. Police also matched his DNA to traces of skin and hair found on his clothes and the knife.
Mijailovic's confession came after nearly four months of denials. His lawyer, Peter Althin, said he would request a psychiatric screening at the end of the trial, which begins Wednesday.
He declined to give other details on the defense strategy, but legal experts predicted Althin would seek to reduce the charge to manslaughter or claim mental illness on behalf of Mijailovic.
"The question is how much control he had over his actions," said Stockholm University criminology professor Jerzy Sarnecki.
Mijailovic, a Swede of Yugoslav origin, could be sentenced to between 10 years and life in prison, or to a mental hospital if found not mentally competent. Sweden does not have capital punishment.
Mijailovic has a history of mental problems and three convictions, including one for the 1996 stabbing of his father, who survived.
Mijailovic was arrested Sept. 24 after a DNA analysis linked him to clothing believed to have been used by the killer, including a blue denim baseball cap found near the scene.
"Our evidence was strong enough to press charges without his confession," lead prosecutor Agneta Blidberg told The Associated Press.
She said she would call three witnesses to testify: Eva Franchell, who was with Lindh during the attack, the coroner who did Lindh's autopsy, and a British forensic expert who analyzed the knife.
The trial is expected to conclude by Jan. 19, when the verdict will be delivered by two judges and three politically appointed jurors. But sentencing won't be handed down until the psychiatric evaluation, which is expected to take four weeks.
For Swedes, the trial is expected to bring a sense of closure to the killing of one of the country's rising political stars and most-admired women, who seamlessly handled foreign affairs and carried on a happy family life with her two children and husband.
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A 25-year-old Swede of Serbian origin was charged on Monday with the murder of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh, after telling police that Jesus told him to attack her but that he had no political motive.
Mijailo Mijailovic had last week confessed to fatally stabbing Lindh, one of the country's most popular politicians, in September 2003. His trial, which Swedes can tune into on national radio, is to start on Wednesday.
His lawyer has claimed that the killing was a random act of violence, carried out without premeditation, but prosecutors said on Monday they had no doubt that Mijailovic wanted to kill Lindh.
That left no alternative to the charge of murder.
"One can see from the very violence, the power in his attack, that he intended to kill Anna Lindh," chief prosecutor Krister Petersson told Swedish TV Monday.
Lindh, who had been tipped as a future prime minister, was stabbed on September 10 while shopping for clothes at Stockholm department store NK. Her death, the next day, angered and saddened Swedes and drew condemnation and condolences from the world over.
According to transcripts from police interrogations of Mijailovic, obtained by AFP Monday, he confessed to the murder but insisted that the crime had not been politically motivated.
"There was no motive, no political motive," he said, insisting that the murder had not been premeditated.
"It was a coincidence that I ran into her... I was at NK, and then I felt really bad. I was desperate and I didn't know what to do. Then I heard voices talking to me. Then I saw Anna Lindh and then I attacked... I don't know why I did it. I don't remember," he told police.
Of the voices, speaking in Serbo-Croatian, that drove him to the crime, Mijailovic said: "One can't resist the voices, one can't manage to stand up to them. They are a real pain when they come."
Asked whose voice told him to attack Lindh, he replied: "I don't know," before adding: "I think it was Jesus, that he has chosen me."
Police, however, have stated that they believe Mijailovic was well aware that he was attacking Sweden's foreign minister.
"He knew that it was Anna Lindh whom he was attacking," chief investigator Leif Jennekvist said on Swedish TV Monday.
"He rushed up to her, he took out a knife and he stabbed her... in the middle of her body," he said, adding that Mijailovic was at the store for 14 minutes before the attack on Lindh.
"Mijailovic had good possibilities to observe Anna Lindh in the department store. We will also try to prove this with a video film during the trial," he said.
Lindh's friend Eva Franchell, who was shopping with her when she was attacked, also told police she was sure Mijailovic had intentionally targeted her friend.
"The only thing I'm completely sure of... is that he was out to attack Anna," she said according to the police transcripts.
The injuries Mijailovic inflicted, stabbing Lindh repeatedly in the abdomen, chest and arms, were so severe that she died a day later in hospital.
He fled the scene immediately after the attack, leaving behind the bloody knife, a baseball cap and a sweatshirt, as well as fingerprints.
He later buried the rest of the clothing he was wearing that day in a wooded area outside Stockholm, which police eventually recovered, and shaved his head.
Arrested two weeks after the killing, police matched his DNA with DNA found at the murder scene, according to prosecutors.
If convicted, Mijailovic could face a sentence of life in prison, which in Sweden usually corresponds to around 15 years.
If the prosecution cannot prove the murder charge, however, Mijailovic will have to be let go as there is no alternative charge, his lawyer Peter Althin said Monday.
The fast work by police in arresting the alleged murderer of Lindh contrasts with another prominent assassination -- the 1986 murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. Nearly 18 years after his killing in downtown Stockholm, the case remains unsolved.
This is what I'll try to do once the trial starts: post related stories and pictures for that day all on one thread, rather than trying to have several threads going on the same subject.
What's amazing to most Americans is the Swedish passivity during the attack. None of the Swedish men jumped in to protect her during the prolonged attack. I have to say, that given an average group of Americans in a department store in Texas or Florida or New York, she might be alive today. One or two bystanders would have immediately jumped on the attacker, and then the entire crowd would have pulled him to the ground.
Of course, the above is just my opinion. It just seems like the Swedish witnesses to her murder just stood around like sheep watching a wolf attack one of their herd, while waitig for the shepherd to arrive.
Do we know that there were any men, males, nearby? Lindh and her friend were in the women's clothing department at the time.
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