Mördare och poliser

TV news programme Aktuellt (on
SVT) devoted most time to the event.
Secondly, shortly after the murder,
a critical debate was launched on media
reporting that singled out a succession
of individuals as the suspected perpetrator.
The publication of photos and
personal details about a 35-year-old
male suspect was severely criticized.
A questionnaire in Dagens Nyheter’s
online edition on 22 September 2003
showed how three quarters of those
who responded thought that coverage
of the murder was either poor or bad.
Journalists, the general public, columnists
and researchers took part in the
debate that took place in the news,
editorials, op-eds, radio and television
programmes.
Thirdly, the Anna Lindh murder
and investigation that followed were
immediately linked to the unsolved
murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme
in 1986. In Ekot’s broadcast at 17.45
on 10 September – approximately one
and a half hours after the stabbing –
political commentator Inger Arenander
drew similarities between both events,
and the murders were compared several
times during reports on SVT and TV4
that evening. Editorials in major Stockholm
newspapers the next day also
drew a parallel between the two events.
The media interpreted, analysed and
tried to explain Anna Lindh’s murder
against the background of events in
1986. Headings like 17 years – and still
no killer. New bloodstains, new roses but
the same icy silence (Expressen 12/9),
Have we learnt nothing (Dagens Nyheter
12/9), and Cruel proof of flawed
system (Svenska Dagbladet 12/9) set the
interpretative framework that would
underlie media reporting. Expectations
that the killer would be found, on
how the police and prosecutors would
handle the investigation and on the
final burden of proof were set against
the failure to find and convict Palme’s
killer. The interpretative framework was
summarised by two words: Not again!
and established early in the afternoon
of 10 September by Social Democratic
politicians and media analysts.
There are several other similarities
between the shooting of Olof Palme
in February, 1986 and the stabbing of
Anna Lindh in September, 2003. At
the time of their deaths, both were toplevel
politicians with long experience in
the Swedish Social Democratic movement.
Both were well known outside of
Sweden because of their international
assignments. The motive for both
murders was speculated as political;
in the Palme case because of his international
profile, in the Lindh case
because of her leading role in the EMU
referendum campaign. Both murders
were perceived as attacks on Swedish
democracy and openness. Both Palme
and Lindh were murdered in central
Stockholm, and neither of them had
bodyguards. The initial suspects were
later eliminated from both investigations;
in the Palme case, a 33-year-old
male and in the Lindh case, a 35-yearold
male. And both times, charges
were finally brought against people
described as addicts and mentally
a classic criminal drama | 133