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Swedish Police Make Arrest in Lindh Murder

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 September 2003, 06:00 CDT

Dogged by fear of repeating a failure to solve a high-profile assassination, Swedish police arrested a man described as a drifter for the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.

The suspect, who wasn't identified, was arrested Tuesday night at a restaurant near a soccer stadium in a suburb of the capital, police spokeswoman Stina Wessling said.

"It was not a dramatic arrest," Wessling said. She said plainclothes officers arrested the unarmed Swede without incident.

The Swedish news agency TT said the man didn't have a permanent home and had been moving around Stockholm.

Citing court records, TT said the man claimed to have problems with alcohol and cocaine abuse.

The man is 35 and had been convicted of illegally owning a knife, theft and vandalism and had spent eight months in jail for fraud, the agency said, citing a police source.

Lindh was stabbed several times in the stomach, chest and arm in an upscale Stockholm department store last Wednesday and died the next day after several hours of surgery.

The crime shocked the nation and cast a shadow over a weekend referendum on whether to adopt the euro currency.

Until Tuesday, police had made no arrests, a fact that has prompted comparisons to the unsolved slaying of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.

The arrest came after police issued a nationwide alert with a photo of the attacker from a surveillance camera at the department store, showing the attacker in a baseball cap and gray hooded Nike sweat shirt.

Lead investigator Leif Jennekvist said the suspect was "not entirely different" from the man on the pictures, but added police were following other leads as well.

"We have at least five people of high interest that we want to check," Jennekvist said.

Police have said that traces of DNA had been recovered from the knife used in the attack on Lindh, as well as from a baseball cap found near the store.

Jennekvist said family members of the suspect were also questioned by police. He said two other men were taken in for questioning, but were not considered suspects.

Jennekvist said tips from the public helped police identify and arrest the man.

Authorities have said the Sept. 10 attack did not appear to be politically motivated. Lindh did not have bodyguards.

The attack on Lindh occurred blocks away from where Palme was shot to death 17 years ago as he walked home from the movies.

Both killings stunned Sweden, where violent crime is relatively rare and leading politicians often travel without bodyguards.

Lindh's murder overshadowed Tuesday's opening of parliament.

The parliament speaker, Bjoern von Sydow, told lawmakers that Lindh's killing had sent an icy wind sweeping over Sweden.

"The cold from that wind still has us in its grip. But despite the dark that has happened, her memory should be bright," he said.

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