STOCKHOLM, 11 September 2003 — An attack Sweden’s No. 3 government official has prompted the relatively crime-free Nordic nation to step up security for its politicians.
Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed in the chest, stomach and arms by an unidentified assailant while shopping in Stockholm yesterday and was undergoing surgery.
Police said her wounds were not life-threatening and she was conscious when carried into an ambulance on a stretcher. But almost four hours after the attack she was still on the operating table at Stockholm’s Karolinska hospital, her spokesman said.
Tipped as a future prime minister, 46-year-old Lindh has actively campaigned for Sweden to join the euro in a referendum on Sunday. She was shopping in the upmarket NK department store in the city center when attacked. Police said they were seeking a six-foot-tall (1.8 m) man in an army jacket suspected of carrying out the attack. One local television channel described him as “Swedish-looking” and said witnesses saw him throwing away a knife near NK.
There were no clues to a motive and officials would not say whether Lindh had received any threats.
It was a shock to the relatively crime-free Nordic nation whose politicians walk around without bodyguards, except for Prime Minister Goran Persson, who usually has two in plain clothes.
Attack on Open Society
In 1986 the nation was traumatized by the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme who was shot on his way home from a cinema, just a few blocks from where Lindh was stabbed. His attacker was never caught.
“The attack on her is an attack on our open society,” said Persson, who told a news conference he had urgently ordered increased security around King Carl XVI Gustaf, top politicians and major government buildings.
In many smaller northern European states security for public figures is minimal, as was apparent in the Netherlands last year when populist politician Pim Fortuyn was shot and killed. He took few precautions despite having received death threats.
“For the Swedish people it brings back all the old horrible memories of Olof Palme. It might mean Swedish politicians need guards everywhere they go from now on,” said Green Party leader Peter Eriksson. “I sincerely hope it doesn’t lead to that.”
Lindh is a forceful voice on human rights who dubbed US President George W. Bush a “lone ranger” for going to war in Iraq. She criticized Italy’s current EU presidency, saying Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did not enjoy wide support.
Lindh, who is married with two children, became foreign minister in 1998 after a stellar career in the Social Democratic party, which has ruled Sweden for six of the last seven decades.
Rutger Lindahl, politics professor at Gothenburg University, said the motive for the attack on Lindh might be that her euro campaigning had “aroused strong feelings... but it could easily have been a drug-affected person who saw somebody famous.”
