Swedish police said on Tuesday night they had arrested a man suspected of the murder of the country’s foreign minister, Anna Lindh, who was killed last week in an attack in a Stockholm department store.
The suspect was detained near the Swedish capital, a police officer told reporters. No further details were immediately given.
Earlier, police said they had indicted a man in absentia on suspicion of the knife attack on the 46-year-old foreign minister in the NK department store last Wednesday.
Police would not confirm the identity of the suspect, but Swedish media said he was a 35-year-old man with 18 previous convictions, stretching back as far as 1987, for crimes such as fraud, shoplifting, illegal possession of knives and threats of violence against public servants.
His longest prison sentence was eight months, according to the Swedish media reports. He is under two restraining orders, one involving his father, from whom he stole money.
A psychological profile made out at the beginning of his criminal career described him as having ”narcissistic tendencies”. A psychiatric profile made out last year, however, showed that he had no serious psychological disturbances.
For long periods the suspect has lacked a fixed abode and has moved around many flats in Stockholm. He has admitted to the courts that he has alcohol problems and has been experimenting with cocaine, according to the source. He has described himself as a self-taught web designer but would not specify where. He also said he lived for periods in Switzerland.
According to Sweden’s biggest newspaper, Aftonbladet, the suspect moves in far-right circles and is close friends with some of Sweden’s most notorious neo-Nazis.
The newspaper’s sources say police got their breakthrough after his family and care workers recognised the suspect from the department store’s security-camera pictures, which have been widely circulated. His girlfriend was brought in for police questioning yesterday.
Police also said they had successfully extracted a DNA sample from the baseball cap worn and later discarded by the knife man.
But the sample — apparently taken from a smudge of saliva on the cap — does not match any of the 10 000 samples held in Sweden’s national criminal DNA database. It may now be compared with foreign DNA records.
DNA taken from remnants of skin found on the handle of the knife used in the attack has already been sent to Britain for the forensic-science service in Birmingham to study. The Swedes are hoping that their British counterparts, who have pioneered the so-called low copy number technique for DNA testing, may be able to detect tiny amounts of DNA.
A security-camera picture of the suspect has been sent to police across Europe, and to Interpol. Some reports said he may be in Finland, which has no passport checks with Sweden. — Guardian Unlimited Â