Olof Palme is Assassinated

Olof Palme is Assassinated

Close to midnight on 28 February 1986, Sven Olof Joachim Palme was walking home from a cinema with his wife, Lisbeth Palme, in the central Stockholm street, Sveavägen, when he was shot in the back at close range. A second shot grazed Lisbeth’s back. Despite being Prime Minister, Palme sought to live as ordinary a life as possible. He would often go out without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Olof was pronounced dead on arrival at the Sabbatsberg Hospital at 00:06 CET. Lisbet survived without serious injuries.

On 18 March 2020, Swedish investigators met in Pretoria with members of South African intelligence agencies to discuss the case. The South Africans handed over their file from 1986 to their Swedish colleagues. Goran Björkdahl, a Swedish diplomat, had done independent research on Palme’s assassination, leading to South Africa’s apartheid regime. Major General Chris Thirion, who headed the foreign section of Military Intelligence (MI) of South Africa, as the Deputy Chief of Staff Defence Intelligence, during the final years of apartheid rule, had told Björkdahl in 2015 that he believed South Africa was behind Palme’s murder.

On 10 June 2020, Swedish prosecutors stated publicly that they knew who had killed Palme and named Stig Engström, also known as “Skandia Man”, as the assassin. Engström was one of about twenty people who had claimed to witness the assassination and was later identified as a potential suspect by Swedish writers Lars Larsson and Thomas Pettersson. Given that Engström had committed suicide in 2000, the authorities also announced that the investigation into Palme’s death was to be closed.

Olof Palme, born on 30 January 1927, was a Swedish politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 until his assassination in 1986. Olof Palme was the youngest child in a well-to-do family. His father died when he was only seven years old. He was a sickly child who had much time to read, and who learnt several languages very early in life. In spite of his upper middle-class origin, Olof Palme became one of the Swedish labour movement’s strongest leaders.

Palme’s political career started in 1953, when Tage Erlander, the then Prime Minister, employed him as his personal secretary. Already at that time he had his eyes focused on the elimination of colonialism, the right of national self-determination, the need for a new economic world order, the fight against racism, the dream of equal rights and the democratisation of education. His close friendship and co-operation with Tage Elander continued through the years, as he was made Minister without Portfolio (1963), Minister of Communication (1965), and Minister of Education (1967). It was only logical that he, at the resignation of Erlander in 1969, was elected Chairperson of the Social Democratic Party, thus becoming Prime Minister of Sweden.

Palme became a pivotal and influential figure domestically as well as in international politics from the 1960s onwards. He was steadfast in his non-alignment policy towards the superpowers, accompanied by support for numerous liberation movements following the decolonisation process, including, most controversially, economic and vocal support for a number of developing countries’ governments. He was the first Western head of government to visit Cuba after its revolution, giving a speech in Santiago praising contemporary Cuban revolutionaries.

Frequently a critic of United States and Soviet foreign policy, he expressed his resistance to imperialist ambitions and authoritarian regimes, including those of Francisco Franco of Spain, Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, Gustáv Husák of Czechoslovakia, and most notably John Vorster and P. W. Botha of South Africa, denouncing apartheid as a “particularly gruesome system” (Wikipedia). His 1972 condemnation of American bombings in Hanoi, comparing the tactic to the Treblinka extermination camp, resulted in a temporary freeze in Sweden-United States relations.

Olof Palme was murdered in 1986 by gunshots from a 1930s .357 S&W Magnum. Two bullets were found but the suspected gun was found many years later, the gun was too damaged by rust and water, so it could not be reliable evidence. Because the weapon was a revolver (which does not automatically eject cartridge cases) there were no cases to recover for ballistic examination – only the two bullets recovered from the street. Two male suspects were detained and later were acquitted and released; both men were later killed under mysterious circumstances. As of 2010, there was no murderer, so the case was still unresolved.

Ten years after the assassination, towards the end of September 1996, apartheid Security Branch Colonel Eugene de Kock, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria, alleging that Palme had been shot and killed because he “strongly opposed the apartheid regime and Sweden made substantial contributions to the ANC”. De Kock claimed that the person responsible for Palme’s murder was Craig Williamson, a former police colleague and a South African spy. Former apartheid Security Branch Captain Dirk Coetzee, who used to work with Williamson, a few days later, identified Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout with links to the South African security and intelligence services, as Palme’s actual murderer.

However, what made matters worse was that a third person, Swedish mercenary by the name of Bertil Wedin, who was living in Northern Cyprus since 1985, was named as the killer by former Security Branch Lieutenant Peter Caselton, who had worked undercover for Williamson. In October 1996, Swedish police investigators visited South Africa but were unable to uncover evidence to substantiate de Kock’s and other similar claims. In a book published in 2007 on the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), it was suggested that a high-ranking CCB operative, Athol Visser (or “Ivan the Terrible”), was responsible for planning and carrying out Olof Palme’s assassination.

Palme’s assassination on a Stockholm street on 28 February 1986 was the first murder of a national leader in Sweden since Gustav III in 1792 and had a great impact across Scandinavia and the developing world, particularly southern Africa. Palme was very popular among the left but harshly detested by liberals and conservatives. He is viewed by his supporters as one of the architects of Sweden’s modern welfare state but was often at loggerheads with big business and the military and frequently spoke out against nuclear military power. This was due in part to his international activities, especially those directed against the United States foreign policy, and in part to his aggressive and outspoken debating style.

According to African National Congress (ANC) President Oliver Tambo’s message of condolence he sent to the Swedish Deputy Prime Minister, Ingvar Carlsson, “The murderer’s gun that fired the fatal shot was aimed directly against the ANC and our people as well, because none can benefit from this enormously horrendous crime except the oppressors and exploiters, and first and foremost among them the Pretoria regime. …As we march forward towards the accomplishment of Olof Palme’s dream of a lifetime, the liberation of South Africa, his name will be on our banners, his memory in our hearts and minds and his example a driving impulse to us who must be prepared to give our lives as he did his own” (Sechaba, April 1986).

“And so History teaches with her light that man can change that which exists and if he takes purity into battle in his honour blooms a noble spring.” (Pablo Neruda – quoted by Gaston Browne, 2017).

Sources:
Wikipedia
South African History Online (SAHO).
Palme Center, “About Olof Palme”, Olof Palmes Internationella Center, 1992.
Gaston Browne, “Statement of the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda”, CARICOM-Cuba Summit, 8 December 2017.
Toby Luckhurst, “Olof Palme: Who killed Sweden’s prime minister?”, BBC News, 8 June 2020.
Göran Björkdahl, “South Africa may hold the answer to who murdered Olof Palme”, The Guardian, 8 June 2020.
Jon Henley, “Swedish prosecutors close Olof Palme murder inquiry after 34 years”, The Guardian, 10 June 2020.
Elin Hofverberg, “The Murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme”, The Library of Congress, 1 March 2021.
Thomas Erdbrink and Christina Anderson, “After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme”, The New York Times, 10 June 2020.
Andrew Nestingen, “Who killed Sweden’s prime minister: 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe”, The Conversation US, 11 June 2020.
Oliver Tambo, “ANC Pays Tribute to Olof Palme”, Sechaba, April 1986.

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