Sweden unmasks a prime minister’s assassin

ON FEBRUARY 28TH 1986, when Olof Palme, Sweden’s prime minister, was assassinated, terrorism was a remote concern in his country. It took police five hours to set up barriers. He and his wife had been walking through downtown Stockholm, unprotected, after seeing a film. The leader of the Social Democratic party since 1969, Palme was a pillar of Sweden’s welfare state and the architect of its leftist foreign policy, bashing America’s war in Vietnam and courting third-world socialist governments. He also went after apartheid, so for decades speculation swirled that South African agents might have murdered him. In March Swedish investigators met intelligence services in Pretoria, and later announced they would make their findings public on June 10th.