Swedish police were to question on Tuesday a former secret agent working for South Africa’s apartheid regime in connection with the unresolved assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme 17 years ago, Swedish media reported.
Swedish police would however not comment on the report, published in the tabloid Aftonbladet.
”We will not discuss the Palme investigation publicly,” said Swedish police chief Lars Nylen, adding: ”There is so much turbulence right now surrounding the investigation.”
Palme, a vociferous opponent of South Africa’s apartheid policies, was gunned down by an unidentified man while walking home from a Stockholm cinema on February 28, 1986.
Swedish media reported recently that former officers who served under the apartheid regime have proof implicating members of the inner circle of former South African president PW Botha in the Palme killing.
South African media have identified a former member of the security police, Roy Allen (54) as being the agent linked to Palme’s murder.
In an interview published in the tabloid on Tuesday, Allen, who lives in Perth, Australia, said he was not the murderer and would say as much to Swedish police during questioning.
”I am going to maintain what I have said earlier, that I am innocent and that I was not involved in the murder,” he said.
Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, which broke the story in a series of articles starting on January 20, said ”an original military document” dated November 20, 1985, showed that the orders for an operation dubbed ”Slingshot”, whose target was identified as ”O.P.”, came directly from Botha’s chief security advisor, who was not named.
The document was a letter sent to the chief operating officer of the apartheid regime’s secret police, Craig Williamson, whose name has already surfaced in the murder investigation. According to the letter, Palme was to be murdered between February 21 and 23, 1986, during an anti-apartheid conference, which was attended by African National Congress (ANC) leader Oliver Tambo.
Palme was actually shot one week later. According to the South African informants cited by Dagens Nyheter, one of whom held a senior post in the regime, documents prove the agent — Roy Allen, according to South African media — was in Stockholm on the day of the murder. – Sapa-AFP