Sorry to disappoint you but in response to "blood libels" I offer the following -
It appears that the reason for this tragic death had nothing to do with the mideast.
Lindh Got E-Mail Threat Two Weeks Before Murder
Fri September 12, 2003 09:01 AM ET
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was sent an e-mail threatening her and her children two weeks before she was fatally stabbed while out shopping, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
The e-mail accused Lindh -- who campaigned hard for Swedes to vote "Yes" to joining the euro in a referendum on Sunday -- of being a "power-hungry bitch sitting in the lap of big business," public service SR radio said quoting from the letter.
The e-mail, which was not passed on to police, was sent to Lindh on August 27, the day after an article written by her and Carl-Henric Svanberg, chief executive of flagship telecoms company Ericsson, was published in a leading daily newspaper.
Lindh, a member of the working-class-rooted center-left Social Democratic Party, and Svanberg, one of Sweden's richest men, argued that a rejection of the European Union's common currency would hit jobs and investment in the Swedish economy.
Lindh, a 46-year-old mother-of-two, was fatally stabbed by an unknown male attacker on Wednesday when she was out shopping with a friend. She died of her wounds on Thursday.
Like most Swedish politicians, apart from the prime minister, she had no bodyguards.
Many Swedes fear her murder will go unsolved like that of Prime Minister Olof Palme who was shot dead in central Stockholm in 1986 while walking home from a cinema. Palme had given his bodyguards a night off.
Top Foreign Ministry official, Mikael Eriksson, told the radio the letter was not passed on to the police unit responsible for ministers' security, Sapo. He did not specify what threats were contained in the e-mail.
"In a situation when the foreign minister is dead, you obviously look at all measures and routines that could have been handled differently," he said. "But in this particular case I don't want to say whether this should have been handed over (to Sapo)."
Sapo deputy chief Kurt Malmstrom said the threat analysis team responsible for assessing potential threats against cabinet members should have seen the letter.
Eriksson said Lindh had not seen the e-mail because she had explicitly said she did not want to see any such letters.
asia.reuters.com |
