25 years on, Swedish police still receive tips on premier's murder

Feb 21, 2011, 14:52 GMT

Stockholm - Police tasked with investigating the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme continue to receive tips daily, the lead investigator said Monday, one week before the 25th anniversary of the killing.

'We get two, three tips a day,' Detective Superintendent Stig Edqvist said during a news conference at police headquarters.

Palme was shot and killed in Stockholm while walking home from the cinema with his wife in 1986.

Christer Pettersson, the man convicted of the killing in July 1989, was later acquitted on appeal. He died in 2004.

In 1998, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal to reopen the case against Pettersson, saying that a conviction would require a confession and a murder weapon.

Edqvist has led the investigation since 1997 - currently with the help of three police officers and a secretary. The team focuses on tips that involve a named person or a weapon.

During the two-decade murder probe, 'almost 130 people have confessed,' Edqvist said. Further investigation showed those claims to be untrue.

The unsolved Palme case had often been cited as grounds for abolishing Sweden's 25-year statute of limitations.

Parliament did so last year for certain serious crimes, including murder, manslaughter, genocide and terrorism.

Prosecutor Kerstin Skarp, who has worked with the Palme investigation since 1997, told the German Press Agency dpa it was good that the investigation will not be shut down.

'It would have been terrible if a decisive puzzle piece had come in and could not be used,' she said.

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