Sources say South Africa handed over dossier on 1986 murder, but not everyone is hopeful mystery will be solved
The findings of an investigation into one of the world’s most infamous cold cases, the 1986 assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, will finally be made public in Stockholm on Wednesday.
Palme was shot in the back at close range on a Stockholm street while walking home from the cinema with his wife Lisbeth on a February evening. The gunman disappeared into a side street and the mystery has thwarted the Swedish police ever since, giving rise to an industry built around competing speculative theories.
The two leading schools of thought are that it was a lone gunman, perhaps enraged by Palme’s social democratic politics, or a much more intricate plot involving the South African apartheid regime.
South African intelligence officials met Swedish investigators in Pretoria in March and handed over a dossier of information related to the association, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
It is not clear however whether the dossier included substantive new evidence, or was simply tying up loose ends in a decades-long investigation.
There has long been speculation over the role of the South African apartheid intelligence services, motivated by Palme’s support for the African National Congress and his efforts to close down arms and oil smuggling rings involving the apartheid regime, but no hard proof.
The meeting between South African intelligence and Swedish officials took place on 18 March at the offices of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) in Pretoria, according to a South African intelligence source.
