There is little new proof about who assassinated Olof Palme, despite various accusations, reports Peta Thornycroft
THE Swedish government is no closer to proving a South African link in the assassination of prime minister Olof Palme than it was when he was gunned down one night on a Stockholm sidewalk 10 years ago.
Almost every day since convicted police killer Eugene de Kock told the court last week he knew who killed Palme there have been accusations and denials from those named in connection with his death.
The various men accused of killing Palme are known to investigators in Stockholm and South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency. They were a motley crew of two-bit operators in lowly jobs in South Africa’s clumsy intelligence services.
The names of Palme’s “assassin” come from two main sources, via various conduits, embellished in the telling in a multitude of bars.
One version comes from a low-ranking former security policeman, “Riaan” Stander. The second comes from De Kock’s wild but loyal friend, Peter Casselton, who worked for South Africa’s spymasters, mostly in London, for years. One name is common to both men’s stories about Palme: former spy Craig Williamson.
Williamson continues to deny any involvement in the Palme affair.
The Stander version of events goes like this: Williamson, as boss of a military intelligence operation called Longreach (Pty) Ltd, sent former Selous Scout Ant White to shoot Palme. He says White was assisted in the assassination by British “spy” Mike Irwin, who also worked for Longreach.
Stander sometimes produces a document, an air waybill, which he says was for silencers sent to Irwin and White who were practising their marksmanship in the Seychelles.
Former hit-squad policeman Dirk Coetzee, who has had a busy time with the press this week, first heard about this version of Palme’s assassination from Stander. It was Coetzee who reportedly named White last weekend as Palme’s killer.
White, running a furniture factory on the outskirts of shabby, dirty Beira in Mozambique, was a ruthless killer for Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. But his reputation transcends even those most gruesome war stories.
Journalists piecing together apartheid’s secret wars have heard tales of extraordinary pursuits in connection with White. Of how he shipped a warehouse full of elephant tusks out of Burundi. Of how he shot out all Mozambique’s elephants.
Williamson confirms White was a founder member of Longreach. He says White didn’t know at first the company was a military intelligence front reporting to Brigadier “Tolletjie” Botha.
But Mozambique’s Frelimo government has sheltered White for years. A senior Frelimo intelligence officer in Maputo told the Mail & Guardian in 1992 that White became close to Frelimo during the latter stages of the war against Renamo.
Williamson said from Angola on Wednesday that he hired Stander several months after Palme’s death to work for him as a security guard, firstly in Longreach and then in the odd company GMR, named after its fabulously rich owner, Giovanni Mario Ricci.
Williamson said he sacked Stander in connection with allegations of fraud about a year after he hired him.
Casselton’s version of the Palme assassination, according to Williamson, involves right-wing Swede Bertil Weden, now living in Cyprus, who has repeatedly denied any involvement.
Weden’s name was first published in connection with the Palme assassination in The Guardian five years ago. He has also been the subject of lengthy investigative reports in Swedish newspapers.
Weden was acquitted in a British court 14 years ago in connection with selling information to South Africa.
Williamson said this week he first met Weden in South Africa in about 1980. “He was bright. He told me he was a journalist and he knew the political differences between the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress. I recruited him and sent him to London as part of the European operation I was setting up. I think we paid him about o1 000 a month, quite good money in those days.”
Weden reported to Casselton who was based in London. But his job ended after his appearance in court in 1982. “He was blown after that, no use any more,” Williamson said.
Casselton was jailed in Britain after being found guilty in connection with burglaries of ANC offices in London. Williamson said he paid Casselton R100 000 as a gratuity after he was released from prison.
Casselton was also involved, together with Williamson, in blowing up the ANC’s offices in London in 1982.
Scandinavian newspapers reported on Thursday that Casselton “confessed” to Swedish embassy officials in Pretoria on Wednesday that Weden had told him he had killed Palme.