Posted on 01/13/2004 6:43:32 AM PST by dead
The man who has admitted killing Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh in September will go on trial for murder today, when he is expected to tell the court that Jesus told him to do it but that he had no political motive.
Mijailo Mijailovic, 25, a Swede born to Serbian parents, confessed last week to fatally stabbing Lindh, one of the country's most popular politicians, at Stockholm's upmarket NK department store on September 10.
The trial, which millions of Swedes are expected to follow via a live radio broadcast, is expected to conclude on January 19.
If convicted, Mijailovic faces a life sentence, which in Sweden usually corresponds to about 15 years.
Mijailovic has admitted attacking Lindh as she shopped with a girlfriend, but without a bodyguard, for clothes for a televised debate on the euro just days before Sweden was to vote in a referendum on the issue.
Stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen, arms and chest, Lindh died on the operating table 13 hours later.
Her death sent shockwaves through Sweden and the world, rekindling dark memories of the still unsolved 1986 assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.
While prosecutors have charged Mijailovic with murder, which implies intent to kill, his defence lawyer has said that the attack was a random act of violence, carried out without premeditation.
According to transcripts from police interrogations of Mijailovic released on Monday, Mijailovic said he saw Lindh in the store and heard voices in his head urging him to kill her.
"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," then added: "I think it was Jesus, that he has chosen me."
He said that contrary to media reports that he hated Lindh because of her backing for NATO's 1999 air strikes against Serbia during the Kosovo war, he was not interested in politics and the killing was not politically motivated.
"There was no motive, no political motive," he said, adding: "I had absolutely nothing against Anna Lindh ... She was a very nice person.
"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.
Mijailovic fled the scene immediately after the attack, leaving behind the bloody knife and a baseball cap, as well as fingerprints. He buried the rest of the clothing he was wearing that day in a wooded area outside Stockholm and shaved his head.
Mijailovic, who has undergone psychiatric care a number of times, notably after stabbing his father with a kitchen knife in 1996 at the age of 17, was arrested two weeks after Lindh's death.
He said he had finally decided to confess last week because "if I don't say anything then there will be speculation about why it happened and then people will just make stuff up".
Police have however rejected the defence's claim that Mijailovic killed Lindh in a moment of temporary madness, and say they believe he 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.
"He rushed up to her, he took out a knife and he stabbed her ... in the midriff," he said, adding that Mijailovic was at the department store for 14 minutes before the attack.
"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.
Police have matched his DNA with DNA found at the murder scene, according to prosecutors, who said laboratory tests helped them build a watertight case against Mijailovic, confession or not.
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.
The court is likely to demand a psychiatric examination of Mijailovic at the end of the trial before pronouncing its verdict.
Sweden's psychiatric care system has come under fire since the Lindh killing, the most high-profile of a recent series of murderous acts blamed on people in need of psychiatric care but who were turned away because of the closure of clinics and budget cutbacks in the 1990s.
Mijailovic's mother has been quoted in the media as saying her son did not receive the care he needed, and Mijailovic himself told police that he was turned away from a clinic when he sought help after killing Lindh.
AFP
Oh well, this dangerous murderer is going to a hard 15 years, and won’t see freedom until he reaches the feeble old age of 40.
So, at age 40 he'll be released, and will be free to stab a third person - or a fourth, a fifth, a sixth,...
Are talking about the criminal Mexican illegal alien who works on my yard in the summer and blows all the grass clippings out into the street? He works hard and cheap and has very funny ideas about private property rights but, he wouldn't stab anyone.
This is an illness which requires treatment and close supervision.... in a socialist system or in any political system.
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