WORLD : Suspect in Murder of Swedish Prime Minister Denies ‘Infamous Crime’
STOCKHOLM — A man who went on trial today for the 1986 murder of Olof Palme denied that he gunned down the prime minister.
“I did not kill Prime Minister Olof Palme. I did not try to kill Mrs. Palme,” defendant Carl Gustaf Christer Pettersson told the court. “The shooting was an infamous crime that I could never have committed.”
Palme was shot in the back from a distance of eight inches Feb. 28, 1986, as he walked home from a movie. The gunman escaped down a dark side street. Mrs. Palme was slightly wounded by a second bullet.
Chief Magistrate Michael af Geijerstam broke a five-month news blackout on the defendant’s identity by reading Pettersson’s name live on a radio broadcast. Under Swedish law his name could not be released until the trial, and he has been identified in Swedish media only as “the 42-year-old.”
Pettersson has a history of drug and alcohol abuse and a long criminal record.
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