Olof Palme: Encyclopedia II - Olof Palme - Conspiracy theories

Olof Palme - Conspiracy theories

Palme's assassination remains unsolved, with a number of conspiracy theories surrounding the murder.

Olof Palme - Right-wing extremists

A Swedish right-wing extremist, Victor Gunnarsson, was quickly arrested for the murder but was soon released, after a dispute between the police and prosecuting attorneys. John Ausonius, in those days named John Stannerman, was also one of the police's suspects for the murder. However, Stannerman could not be linked to the murder because he was locked up in prison the night Palme was shot.

Olof Palme - Kurdish connection

Hans Holmér, the Stockholm police commissioner, followed up an intelligence lead passed to him (supposedly by Bertil Wedin) and arrested a number of Kurds living in Sweden, after allegations that one of their organisations, the PKK, was responsible for the murder. The lead proved inconclusive however and ultimately led to Holmér's removal from the Palme murder investigation. Fifteen years later, in April 2001, a team of Swedish police officers went to interview Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan in a Turkish prison about Ocalan's allegations that a dissident Kurdish group, led by his ex-wife, murdered Palme. The police team's visit proved futile.

Olof Palme - Christer Pettersson

More than a year and a half after Palme's death Christer Pettersson, a small-time criminal, drug user and alcoholic, was arrested for the murder in December 1988. Identified by Mrs Palme as the killer, Pettersson was tried and convicted of the murder, but was later acquitted on appeal to the High Court. The appeal succeeded mainly because the murder weapon had not been found.

Additional evidence against Pettersson surfaced in the late 1990s, mostly stemming from various petty criminals who had altered their stories but also from a confession made by Pettersson. The chief prosecutor, Agneta Blidberg, considered re-opening the case. But she acknowledged that a confession alone would not be sufficient, saying: "He must say something about the weapon because the appeals court set that condition in its ruling. That is the only technical evidence that could be cited as a reason to re-open the case." While the legal case against Pettersson therefore remains closed, the police file on the investigation cannot be closed until both murder weapon and murderer are found. Christer Pettersson died on September 29, 2004.

Olof Palme - South Africa connection

On February 21, 1986–a week before he was murdered–Palme made the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held in Stockholm, attended by hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathizers as well as leaders and officials from the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement such as Oliver Tambo. Cuban artist Rafael Enriquez depicted Palme on a poster with an extract from that 1986 speech:

Ten years later, towards the end of September 1996, Colonel Eugene de Kock, a former South African police officer, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria alleging that Palme had been shot and killed in 1986 because he "strongly opposed the apartheid regime and Sweden made substantial contributions to the ANC". De Kock went on to claim he knew the person responsible for Palme's murder. He alleged it was Craig Williamson, a former police colleague and a South African superspy. A few days later, Brigadier Johannes Coetzee, who used to be Williamson's boss, identified Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout with links to the South African security services, as Palme's actual murderer. Then a third person, Swedish mercenary Bertil Wedin, living in Northern Cyprus since 1985, was named as the killer by Peter Caselton, a member of Coetzee's assassination squad which was known as Operation Longreach.[1]The following month, in October 1996, Swedish police investigators visited South Africa but were unable to uncover the evidence to substantiate de Kock's claims.

In 1999, Coetzee, Williamson, de Kock and Caselton were all granted amnesty by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for having been involved in bombing the ANC's offices in London on March 14, 1982. There were no fatalities but it was widely rumored that the ANC's Oliver Tambo, who was to have attended a meeting there at the time of the bombing, was the intended target.[2]

Olof Palme - P2 and Irangate

According to controversial American political activist and conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche, Olof Palme's murder was related to this arms-trade operation: "The earlier discovery of documents in the police search of the Malmö premises of Karl-Erik Schmitz, and Prime Minister Palme's concern with those arms-trafficking matters, were among the prime known evidences of motive for what must have been a carefully prearranged insertion of an assassin at the relevant moment of opportunity." [3]

Italian magazine Panorama revealed that president Francesco Cossiga had sent a letter to prime minister Giulio Andreotti after having reviewed the content of interviews between RAI journalist Ennio Remondino and former CIA agents Richard Brenneke and Ibrahim Razin. President Cossiga was concerned by the statements, and said: "If the government were to think that the information had any basis, I think that it should inform the judiciary authority and the Parliamentary Commission on Massacres and, at the level of the bilateral relations, the relevant authorities in the U.S.A. and in Sweden." Otherwise, the journalists who published the information without previously thoroughly checking its validity, should be punished.

According to those sources, three days before Olof Palme's death, Licio Gelli, member of P2 freemasonic lodge, had sent a telegram to Philip Guarino, at that time an important member of the Republican circle around George H.W. Bush. This telegram said: "Tell our friend that the Swedish palm will be felled." CIA agent Razin claims that the National Security Archives have the text of the telegram. According to him, P2 would have been interested by Olof Palme's murder because "Sweden was one of the main protagonists of the illegal weapons traffic at the time of the Iran-Iraq war when Palme was prime minister and thus Palme was surely aware of what was happening." [4]. According to an interview of Gene "Chip" Tatum by "Free Republic", Palme was assassinated because he refused an arms-trade [5]. The arms trade would have been part of the agreement reached during the October Surprise.

Ibrahim Razin also told that DINA agent Michael Townley, who has been convicted for Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination, was in Stockholm a week before Olof Palme's murder.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Conspiracy theories", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki