The man who confessed to fatally stabbing Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh was on Tuesday sentenced to life in prison, more than six months after the murder plunged Sweden into deep shock.
Lindh died on Sept. 11, a day after Mijailo Mijailovic, now 25, 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.
"We are happy," one of the prosecutors, Krister Petersson, told reporters after the life sentence, which was widely expected, was announced.
Mijailovic confessed to the crime in January, claiming he had heard voices in his head which told him to stab Lindh, but this explanation should be disregarded, the court ruled.
It cited a court-ordered psychiatric examination which concluded that Mijailovic was not insane, neither when he stabbed Lindh nor afterwards, meaning he knew what he was doing.
"It is beyond reasonable doubt that Mijailo Mijailovic intended to kill Anna Lindh," the court said.
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 it was too early to say whether he would do so.
But Althin insisted that the prosecution had failed to prove premeditation on the part of his client.
Mijailovic never provided any motive for the attack, insisting however that it was not political. He said merely that he was sleep-deprived and doped up on a cocktail of anti-depressants when he heard the voices in his head telling him to attack Lindh.
Her 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.
Justice Minister Thomas Bodstroem said he was relieved that the Lindh case had been brought to a conclusion, given the national trauma Swedes have experienced throughout the 18-year-old Palme investigation.
"It is very important that the case was cleared up because otherwise there would be an open wound in society. It is a sign that the system works," 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 pride.
After the arrest of Mijailovic, two weeks after the murder, it became clear that he was 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, who had a history of psychiatric problems and who in 1996 stabbed his father with a kitchen knife, 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 Mijailovic's attack on Lind, and ordered him to pay Lindh's widower and two sons a total of 150,000 kronor (US$20,000) in damages.
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 University, 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 different treatment," he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including