Lindh killer could have fled abroad, Swedish police say
( 2003-09-16 09:40) (Agencies)
The killer of Swedish Foreign
Minister Anna Lindh may have slipped out of the country, Stockholm police said
Monday as they widened their search for the assassin.
In a downbeat review of the probe, police said initial genetic tests on a cap
abandoned by the killer as he fled after stabbing Lindh in a Stockholm
department store Wednesday had not matched any of around 10,000 samples in
Swedish DNA records.
"There's no certainty that he's in the country," Stockholm police
commissioner Leif Jennekvist told a news conference of the killer, who has been
described as white, aged about 30 and with dark hair. "But there's no certainty
that he's left."
Police said people should not be confused by images of a man, splashed by
Swedish dailies as the main suspect and taken by store surveillance cameras just
before Lindh was stabbed. The killer might be someone else, and was not
necessarily Swedish.
"We don't say the man in the photos is the killer," Jennekvist said. "We want
to talk to him ... with a very high priority." Thousands of roses have been
placed at a makeshift shrine outside the store since Lindh died of wounds
Thursday.
Lindh's murder stirred memories for Swedes of the 1986 shooting of Prime
Minister Olof Palme outside a Stockholm cinema. A man was convicted of his
murder but acquitted on appeal and the gun has never been found.
Swedes voted against adopting the euro as their currency Sunday by a 56 to 42
percent margin, ignoring a "Yes" campaign led by Prime Minister Goran Persson
and by Lindh, a 46-year-old mother-of-two who had been widely expected to become
the next Social Democrat premier.
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