Early life and education
Palme was born in Östermalm, Stockholm, Sweden. He came from an upper-class background. However, his political orientation came to be influenced by Social Democratic ideas and ideals. This was mainly the effect of his travels in developing countries as a student leader (see below).
On a scholarship, he studied at Kenyon College, Ohio 1947-1948, graduating with a B.A. in less than a year. Inspired by the radical debate in the student community, he wrote a critical essay on Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. After hitchhiking through the U.S., he returned to Sweden to study law at Stockholm University. During his time at university, Palme became involved in student politics, working with the Swedish National Union of Students. In 1951, he became a member of the social democratic student association in Stockholm, although it seems he did not attend their political meetings at the time. The following year he was elected President of the Swedish National Union of Students, a position making it necessary to tone down party loyalties.
Palme attributed his becoming a socialist to three major influences:
in 1947 he attended a debate on taxes between the Social Democrat Ernst Wigforss, the conservative Jarl Hjalmarsson and the liberal Elon Andersson
the time he spent in the United States in the 1940s made him realise how wide the class divide was in America, and the extent of racism against blacks
and a trip in Asia in 1953 had opened his eyes to the consequences of colonialism and imperialism.
[edit]
Political career
In 1953, Palme was recruited by social democratic prime minister Tage Erlander to work in his secretariat. From 1955 he was a board member of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League. In 1958 he was elected as an MP.
Olof Palme held several cabinet posts from 1963 and onwards. In 1967 he became Minister of Education, and the following year he was the target of fierce criticism from left-wing students protesting against the government's plans for university reform. When party leader Tage Erlander stepped down in 1969, Palme was unanimously elected as the new leader by the Social Democratic party congress and succeeded Erlander as Prime Minister.
Palme's subsequent 125-month tenure as Prime Minister, and his untimely death, made him the most internationally-known Swedish politician of the 20th century (with the possible exception of the two humanitarians Raoul Wallenberg and Dag Hammarskjöld).
His protégé and political ally, Bernt Carlsson, who was appointed UN Commissioner for Namibia in July 1987, also suffered an untimely death. Carlsson was killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 crash on December 21, 1988 en route to the UN signing ceremony in New York, whereby South Africa granted a much-delayed independence to Namibia.
[edit]
Radicalism
Olof Palme, Lisbet Palme and Fidel Castro in Cuba, 1975Olof Palme became leader of a generation of Swedish Social Democrats who politically stood much further to the left than their predecessors.
Palme was a controversial political figure on the international scene: his outspoken criticism of the United States for the Vietnam war; campaigning against nuclear weapons proliferation; criticism towards the Franco Regime in Spain; opposition to apartheid and support for economic sanctions against South Africa; his support—both political and financial—for the African National Congress (ANC) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); meeting with Fidel Castro of Cuba, all ensured that Palme had much opposition abroad, as well as friends in many countries.
Domestically, too, his political views engendered a great deal of hostility among Sweden's right-wingers, especially the Social Democrat drive to expand the Labour Union influence over businesses on behalf of private ownership. At the time of his death, Palme had been accused of being pro-Soviet and not safeguarding Sweden's interests. Arrangements had therefore been made for him to go to Moscow to discuss a number of contentious issues, including alleged Soviet submarine incursions into Swedish waters.
Expressing support for the national liberation movements in Latin America and Palestine, Palme was wary of similar activities inside the USSR, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. While Swedish right-wing opposition supported Baltic national liberation movements, Palme accused the members of the Moderate party of "returning to that crusading spirit aiming to 'liberate' Eastern Europe that prevailed in conservative groups in the West during the Cold War" and also accused the Moderates of creating "danger to the safety of the Swedish security policy." (Debate on March 16, 1983). [1]
[edit]
Assassination
Street corner at which Palme was shotOlof Palme could often be seen without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from a movie theatre with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on February 28, 1986, the couple were attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range. A second shot wounded Lisbet Palme.
Police said that a taxi-driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm. Two young girls sitting in a car close to the scene of the shooting tried to help the prime minister. He was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival at 00:06 CET on March 1, 1986. Mrs Palme's wound was treated and she recovered.
The attacker escaped eastwards on the crossing Tunnelgatan and disappeared.
Deputy prime minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties as prime minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.
[edit]
Conspiracy theories
Palme's assassination remains unsolved, with a number of conspiracy theories surrounding the murder.
[edit]
Right-wing extremists
A Swedish right-wing extremist, Victor Gunnarsson, was quickly arrested for the murder but was soon released, after a dispute between the police and prosecuting attorneys. Gunnarsson had connections to various rightwing extremist groups, among these the European Workers Party, the Swedish branch of the fascist LaRouche Movement.
John Ausonius, in those days named John Stannerman, was also one of the police's suspects for the murder. However, Stannerman could not be linked to the murder because he was locked up in prison the night Palme was shot.
[edit]
Kurdish connection
Hans Holmér, the Stockholm police commissioner, followed up an intelligence lead passed to him (supposedly by Bertil Wedin) and arrested a number of Kurds living in Sweden, after allegations that one of their organisations, the PKK, was responsible for the murder. The lead proved inconclusive however and ultimately led to Holmér's removal from the Palme murder investigation. Fifteen years later, in April 2001, a team of Swedish police officers went to interview Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan in a Turkish prison about Öcalan's allegations that a dissident Kurdish group, led by his ex-wife, murdered Palme. The police team's visit proved futile.
[edit]
Christer Pettersson
More than a year and a half after Palme's death Christer Pettersson, a criminal, drug user and alcoholic, was arrested for the murder in December 1988. Picked out by Mrs Palme at an identity parade as the killer, Pettersson was tried and convicted of the murder, but was later acquitted on appeal to the High Court. Pettersson's appeal succeeded for three main reasons:
the murder weapon had never been found;
no clear motive for the killing; and,
doubts about the reliability of Mrs Palme's evidence.
Additional evidence against Pettersson surfaced in the late 1990s, mostly stemming from various petty criminals who had altered their stories but also from a confession made by Pettersson. The chief prosecutor, Agneta Blidberg, considered re-opening the case. But she acknowledged that a confession alone would not be sufficient, saying:
"He must say something about the weapon because the appeals court set that condition in its ruling. That is the only technical evidence that could be cited as a reason to re-open the case."
While the legal case against Pettersson therefore remains closed, the police file on the investigation cannot be closed until both murder weapon and murderer are found. Christer Pettersson died on September 29, 2004 of cerebral hemorrhage after injuring his head.
[edit]
New evidence?
According to a documentary program aired on the Swedish television channel SVT in February 2006, associates of Pettersson claimed that he had confessed to them his role in the murder, but with the explanation that it was a case of mistaken identity. Apparently, Pettersson had intended to kill a drug dealer who customarily walked, in similar clothing, along the same street at night.
The program also suggested there was greater police awareness than previously acknowledged because of surveillance of drug activity in the area. The police had several officers in apartments and cars along those few blocks of Sveavägen but, 45 minutes before the murder, the police monitoring ceased.
In the light of these latest revelations, Swedish police undertook to review Palme's case and Pettersson's role. However, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter of February 28, 2006 carried articles ridiculing the TV documentary, and alleging that the filmmaker had fabricated a number of statements while omitting other contradictory evidence.[2]
[edit]
South Africa connection
Cuban poster by Rafael Enriquez. 1986.On February 21, 1986–a week before he was murdered–Palme made the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held in Stockholm, attended by hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathizers as well as leaders and officials from the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement such as Oliver Tambo. Cuban artist Rafael Enriquez depicted Palme on a poster with an extract from that 1986 speech:
"Apartheid cannot be reformed, it has to be eliminated."
Ten years later, towards the end of September 1996, Colonel Eugene de Kock, a former South African police officer, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria alleging that Palme had been shot and killed in 1986 because he "strongly opposed the apartheid regime and Sweden made substantial contributions to the ANC". De Kock went on to claim he knew the person responsible for Palme's murder. He alleged it was Craig Williamson, a former police colleague and a South African superspy. A few days later, Brigadier Johannes Coetzee, who used to be Williamson's boss, identified Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout with links to the South African security services, as Palme's actual murderer. Then a third person, Swedish mercenary Bertil Wedin, living in Northern Cyprus since 1985, was named as the killer by Peter Caselton, a member of Coetzee's assassination squad which was known as Operation Longreach.[3]The following month, in October 1996, Swedish police investigators visited South Africa but were unable to uncover the evidence to substantiate de Kock's claims.
In 1999, Coetzee, Williamson, de Kock and Caselton were all granted amnesty by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for having been involved in bombing the ANC's offices in London on March 14, 1982. There were no fatalities but it was widely rumored that the ANC's Oliver Tambo, who was to have attended a meeting there at the time of the bombing, was the intended target.[4]
[edit]
P2 and Irangate
According to controversial American political activist and conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche, Olof Palme's murder was related to this arms-trade operation: "The earlier discovery of documents in the police search of the Malmö premises of Karl-Erik Schmitz, and Prime Minister Palme's concern with those arms-trafficking matters, were among the prime known evidences of motive for what must have been a carefully prearranged insertion of an assassin at the relevant moment of opportunity." [5]
Italian magazine Panorama revealed that president Francesco Cossiga had sent a letter to prime minister Giulio Andreotti after having reviewed the content of interviews between RAI journalist Ennio Remondino and former CIA agents Richard Brenneke and Ibrahim Razin. President Cossiga was concerned by the statements, and said: "If the government were to think that the information had any basis, I think that it should inform the judiciary authority and the Parliamentary Commission on Massacres and, at the level of the bilateral relations, the relevant authorities in the U.S.A. and in Sweden." Otherwise, the journalists who published the information without previously thoroughly checking its validity, should be punished.
According to those sources, three days before Olof Palme's death, Licio Gelli, member of P2 freemasonic lodge, had sent a telegram to Philip Guarino, at that time an important member of the Republican circle around George H.W. Bush. This telegram said: "Tell our friend that the Swedish palm will be felled." CIA agent Razin claims that the National Security Archives have the text of the telegram. According to him, P2 would have been interested by Olof Palme's murder because "Sweden was one of the main protagonists of the illegal weapons traffic at the time of the Iran-Iraq war when Palme was prime minister and thus Palme was surely aware of what was happening." [6]. According to an interview of Gene "Chip" Tatum by "Free Republic", Palme was assassinated because he refused an arms-trade [7]. The arms trade would have been part of the agreement reached during the October Surprise.
Ibrahim Razin also told that DINA agent Michael Townley, who has been convicted for Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination, was in Stockholm a week before Olof Palme's murder.
[edit]
Indian connection
In his 2005 book Blood on the snow: the killing of Olof Palme historian Jan Bondeson advanced the theory that Palme's murder was linked with arms trades to India. Bondeson's book meticulously recreated the assassination and its aftermath, and suggested that Palme had used his good friendship with Rajiv Gandhi to secure the Swedish armaments company Bofors a SEK 8.4 billion deal to supply the Indian Army with howitzers. However, Palme did not realise that behind his back Bofors had used a shady company called AE Services – nominally based in Guildford, Surrey – to bribe Indian government officials to conclude the deal.
Bondeson alleged that on the morning he was assassinated Palme had met with the Iraqi ambassador to Sweden, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, (the man who would later go on to become notorious as Saddam Hussein's Information Minister during the 2003 Iraq War and become known as 'Baghdad Bob' or 'Comical Ali'). The two discussed Bofors, an organisation which Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf knew well because of its arms sales during the Iran-Iraq War. Bondeson suggested that the ambassador told Palme all about Bofors' activities, which made Palme furious. Bondeson theorised that Palme's murder could have been inadvertently triggered by his conversation with the ambassador, if either the Bofors arms dealers or the middlemen working through AE Services had a prearranged plan to silence the Prime Minister should he ever discover the truth and the deal with India become threatened. According to Bondeson, Swedish police suppressed vital MI6 intelligence about a Bofors/AE Services deal with India.
[edit]
The RAF
The Red Army Faction of Germany claimed responsibility for the assassination of Palme via an anonymous phone call to a London news agency. They supposedly assassinated him because he was the Prime Minister of Sweden during the 1975 Occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm which ended in failure for the RAF. They claimed the assassination was carried out by the 'Holger Meins Commando.'
[edit]
Memorials
Plaque commemorating exact spot of Palme's murder
Palme's grave and monument at nearby Adolf Fredriks kyrka's cemeteryOn April 23, 1986, a part of the street Tunnelgatan in Stockholm was renamed Olof Palmes gata.
Olof Palme sétány (lit. "esplanade") is one of the central streets in the Budapest City Park. It also has a memorial stone for Anna Lindh.
In central Berlin there is a small square named Olof-Palme Platz.
Nicaragua National Conventions Center is called Olof Palme.
In south New Delhi there is a road called Olof Palme Marg.
In Hiddenhausen, Germany, there is a school named after Olof Palme, the Olof-Palme-Gesamtschule.
In Kiel, Germany, there is a street (the B76) called Olof-Palme-Damm.
In Mesestad Riem, Germany the site of the old Flughafen München-Riem, there is a street named "Olof Palme Straße" [8]
In Delft, Netherlands, there is a street named Olof Palmestraat. IKEA has built one of its stores there.
In Moscow, Russia, there is a street named Ulofa Pal'me. The Swedish embassy is located there.
In Athens, Greece, in the traditionally left wing municipality of Kaisargianni there is a small street as well as a large road called Olof Palme.
In Puglia, Italy, there is a perfectly circular road named Via Sven Olof Palme that encircles the town of Bitonto.
The main street of Kulu, a subprovince of Konya, Turkey, is named after Olof Palme. There is also a park with the same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme#Radicalism
Why does it seem that it is Swedish people, for example Dag Hammerskold and olof Palme who try to do what's right and then they get killed for it. Why we need more Swedish people running the world.
Palme was born in Östermalm, Stockholm, Sweden. He came from an upper-class background. However, his political orientation came to be influenced by Social Democratic ideas and ideals. This was mainly the effect of his travels in developing countries as a student leader (see below).
On a scholarship, he studied at Kenyon College, Ohio 1947-1948, graduating with a B.A. in less than a year. Inspired by the radical debate in the student community, he wrote a critical essay on Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. After hitchhiking through the U.S., he returned to Sweden to study law at Stockholm University. During his time at university, Palme became involved in student politics, working with the Swedish National Union of Students. In 1951, he became a member of the social democratic student association in Stockholm, although it seems he did not attend their political meetings at the time. The following year he was elected President of the Swedish National Union of Students, a position making it necessary to tone down party loyalties.
Palme attributed his becoming a socialist to three major influences:
in 1947 he attended a debate on taxes between the Social Democrat Ernst Wigforss, the conservative Jarl Hjalmarsson and the liberal Elon Andersson
the time he spent in the United States in the 1940s made him realise how wide the class divide was in America, and the extent of racism against blacks
and a trip in Asia in 1953 had opened his eyes to the consequences of colonialism and imperialism.
[edit]
Political career
In 1953, Palme was recruited by social democratic prime minister Tage Erlander to work in his secretariat. From 1955 he was a board member of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League. In 1958 he was elected as an MP.
Olof Palme held several cabinet posts from 1963 and onwards. In 1967 he became Minister of Education, and the following year he was the target of fierce criticism from left-wing students protesting against the government's plans for university reform. When party leader Tage Erlander stepped down in 1969, Palme was unanimously elected as the new leader by the Social Democratic party congress and succeeded Erlander as Prime Minister.
Palme's subsequent 125-month tenure as Prime Minister, and his untimely death, made him the most internationally-known Swedish politician of the 20th century (with the possible exception of the two humanitarians Raoul Wallenberg and Dag Hammarskjöld).
His protégé and political ally, Bernt Carlsson, who was appointed UN Commissioner for Namibia in July 1987, also suffered an untimely death. Carlsson was killed in the Pan Am Flight 103 crash on December 21, 1988 en route to the UN signing ceremony in New York, whereby South Africa granted a much-delayed independence to Namibia.
[edit]
Radicalism
Olof Palme, Lisbet Palme and Fidel Castro in Cuba, 1975Olof Palme became leader of a generation of Swedish Social Democrats who politically stood much further to the left than their predecessors.
Palme was a controversial political figure on the international scene: his outspoken criticism of the United States for the Vietnam war; campaigning against nuclear weapons proliferation; criticism towards the Franco Regime in Spain; opposition to apartheid and support for economic sanctions against South Africa; his support—both political and financial—for the African National Congress (ANC) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); meeting with Fidel Castro of Cuba, all ensured that Palme had much opposition abroad, as well as friends in many countries.
Domestically, too, his political views engendered a great deal of hostility among Sweden's right-wingers, especially the Social Democrat drive to expand the Labour Union influence over businesses on behalf of private ownership. At the time of his death, Palme had been accused of being pro-Soviet and not safeguarding Sweden's interests. Arrangements had therefore been made for him to go to Moscow to discuss a number of contentious issues, including alleged Soviet submarine incursions into Swedish waters.
Expressing support for the national liberation movements in Latin America and Palestine, Palme was wary of similar activities inside the USSR, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. While Swedish right-wing opposition supported Baltic national liberation movements, Palme accused the members of the Moderate party of "returning to that crusading spirit aiming to 'liberate' Eastern Europe that prevailed in conservative groups in the West during the Cold War" and also accused the Moderates of creating "danger to the safety of the Swedish security policy." (Debate on March 16, 1983). [1]
[edit]
Assassination
Street corner at which Palme was shotOlof Palme could often be seen without any bodyguard protection, and the night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from a movie theatre with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on February 28, 1986, the couple were attacked by a lone gunman. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range. A second shot wounded Lisbet Palme.
Police said that a taxi-driver used his mobile radio to raise the alarm. Two young girls sitting in a car close to the scene of the shooting tried to help the prime minister. He was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival at 00:06 CET on March 1, 1986. Mrs Palme's wound was treated and she recovered.
The attacker escaped eastwards on the crossing Tunnelgatan and disappeared.
Deputy prime minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties as prime minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party.
[edit]
Conspiracy theories
Palme's assassination remains unsolved, with a number of conspiracy theories surrounding the murder.
[edit]
Right-wing extremists
A Swedish right-wing extremist, Victor Gunnarsson, was quickly arrested for the murder but was soon released, after a dispute between the police and prosecuting attorneys. Gunnarsson had connections to various rightwing extremist groups, among these the European Workers Party, the Swedish branch of the fascist LaRouche Movement.
John Ausonius, in those days named John Stannerman, was also one of the police's suspects for the murder. However, Stannerman could not be linked to the murder because he was locked up in prison the night Palme was shot.
[edit]
Kurdish connection
Hans Holmér, the Stockholm police commissioner, followed up an intelligence lead passed to him (supposedly by Bertil Wedin) and arrested a number of Kurds living in Sweden, after allegations that one of their organisations, the PKK, was responsible for the murder. The lead proved inconclusive however and ultimately led to Holmér's removal from the Palme murder investigation. Fifteen years later, in April 2001, a team of Swedish police officers went to interview Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan in a Turkish prison about Öcalan's allegations that a dissident Kurdish group, led by his ex-wife, murdered Palme. The police team's visit proved futile.
[edit]
Christer Pettersson
More than a year and a half after Palme's death Christer Pettersson, a criminal, drug user and alcoholic, was arrested for the murder in December 1988. Picked out by Mrs Palme at an identity parade as the killer, Pettersson was tried and convicted of the murder, but was later acquitted on appeal to the High Court. Pettersson's appeal succeeded for three main reasons:
the murder weapon had never been found;
no clear motive for the killing; and,
doubts about the reliability of Mrs Palme's evidence.
Additional evidence against Pettersson surfaced in the late 1990s, mostly stemming from various petty criminals who had altered their stories but also from a confession made by Pettersson. The chief prosecutor, Agneta Blidberg, considered re-opening the case. But she acknowledged that a confession alone would not be sufficient, saying:
"He must say something about the weapon because the appeals court set that condition in its ruling. That is the only technical evidence that could be cited as a reason to re-open the case."
While the legal case against Pettersson therefore remains closed, the police file on the investigation cannot be closed until both murder weapon and murderer are found. Christer Pettersson died on September 29, 2004 of cerebral hemorrhage after injuring his head.
[edit]
New evidence?
According to a documentary program aired on the Swedish television channel SVT in February 2006, associates of Pettersson claimed that he had confessed to them his role in the murder, but with the explanation that it was a case of mistaken identity. Apparently, Pettersson had intended to kill a drug dealer who customarily walked, in similar clothing, along the same street at night.
The program also suggested there was greater police awareness than previously acknowledged because of surveillance of drug activity in the area. The police had several officers in apartments and cars along those few blocks of Sveavägen but, 45 minutes before the murder, the police monitoring ceased.
In the light of these latest revelations, Swedish police undertook to review Palme's case and Pettersson's role. However, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter of February 28, 2006 carried articles ridiculing the TV documentary, and alleging that the filmmaker had fabricated a number of statements while omitting other contradictory evidence.[2]
[edit]
South Africa connection
Cuban poster by Rafael Enriquez. 1986.On February 21, 1986–a week before he was murdered–Palme made the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held in Stockholm, attended by hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathizers as well as leaders and officials from the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement such as Oliver Tambo. Cuban artist Rafael Enriquez depicted Palme on a poster with an extract from that 1986 speech:
"Apartheid cannot be reformed, it has to be eliminated."
Ten years later, towards the end of September 1996, Colonel Eugene de Kock, a former South African police officer, gave evidence to the Supreme Court in Pretoria alleging that Palme had been shot and killed in 1986 because he "strongly opposed the apartheid regime and Sweden made substantial contributions to the ANC". De Kock went on to claim he knew the person responsible for Palme's murder. He alleged it was Craig Williamson, a former police colleague and a South African superspy. A few days later, Brigadier Johannes Coetzee, who used to be Williamson's boss, identified Anthony White, a former Rhodesian Selous Scout with links to the South African security services, as Palme's actual murderer. Then a third person, Swedish mercenary Bertil Wedin, living in Northern Cyprus since 1985, was named as the killer by Peter Caselton, a member of Coetzee's assassination squad which was known as Operation Longreach.[3]The following month, in October 1996, Swedish police investigators visited South Africa but were unable to uncover the evidence to substantiate de Kock's claims.
In 1999, Coetzee, Williamson, de Kock and Caselton were all granted amnesty by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for having been involved in bombing the ANC's offices in London on March 14, 1982. There were no fatalities but it was widely rumored that the ANC's Oliver Tambo, who was to have attended a meeting there at the time of the bombing, was the intended target.[4]
[edit]
P2 and Irangate
According to controversial American political activist and conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche, Olof Palme's murder was related to this arms-trade operation: "The earlier discovery of documents in the police search of the Malmö premises of Karl-Erik Schmitz, and Prime Minister Palme's concern with those arms-trafficking matters, were among the prime known evidences of motive for what must have been a carefully prearranged insertion of an assassin at the relevant moment of opportunity." [5]
Italian magazine Panorama revealed that president Francesco Cossiga had sent a letter to prime minister Giulio Andreotti after having reviewed the content of interviews between RAI journalist Ennio Remondino and former CIA agents Richard Brenneke and Ibrahim Razin. President Cossiga was concerned by the statements, and said: "If the government were to think that the information had any basis, I think that it should inform the judiciary authority and the Parliamentary Commission on Massacres and, at the level of the bilateral relations, the relevant authorities in the U.S.A. and in Sweden." Otherwise, the journalists who published the information without previously thoroughly checking its validity, should be punished.
According to those sources, three days before Olof Palme's death, Licio Gelli, member of P2 freemasonic lodge, had sent a telegram to Philip Guarino, at that time an important member of the Republican circle around George H.W. Bush. This telegram said: "Tell our friend that the Swedish palm will be felled." CIA agent Razin claims that the National Security Archives have the text of the telegram. According to him, P2 would have been interested by Olof Palme's murder because "Sweden was one of the main protagonists of the illegal weapons traffic at the time of the Iran-Iraq war when Palme was prime minister and thus Palme was surely aware of what was happening." [6]. According to an interview of Gene "Chip" Tatum by "Free Republic", Palme was assassinated because he refused an arms-trade [7]. The arms trade would have been part of the agreement reached during the October Surprise.
Ibrahim Razin also told that DINA agent Michael Townley, who has been convicted for Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination, was in Stockholm a week before Olof Palme's murder.
[edit]
Indian connection
In his 2005 book Blood on the snow: the killing of Olof Palme historian Jan Bondeson advanced the theory that Palme's murder was linked with arms trades to India. Bondeson's book meticulously recreated the assassination and its aftermath, and suggested that Palme had used his good friendship with Rajiv Gandhi to secure the Swedish armaments company Bofors a SEK 8.4 billion deal to supply the Indian Army with howitzers. However, Palme did not realise that behind his back Bofors had used a shady company called AE Services – nominally based in Guildford, Surrey – to bribe Indian government officials to conclude the deal.
Bondeson alleged that on the morning he was assassinated Palme had met with the Iraqi ambassador to Sweden, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, (the man who would later go on to become notorious as Saddam Hussein's Information Minister during the 2003 Iraq War and become known as 'Baghdad Bob' or 'Comical Ali'). The two discussed Bofors, an organisation which Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf knew well because of its arms sales during the Iran-Iraq War. Bondeson suggested that the ambassador told Palme all about Bofors' activities, which made Palme furious. Bondeson theorised that Palme's murder could have been inadvertently triggered by his conversation with the ambassador, if either the Bofors arms dealers or the middlemen working through AE Services had a prearranged plan to silence the Prime Minister should he ever discover the truth and the deal with India become threatened. According to Bondeson, Swedish police suppressed vital MI6 intelligence about a Bofors/AE Services deal with India.
[edit]
The RAF
The Red Army Faction of Germany claimed responsibility for the assassination of Palme via an anonymous phone call to a London news agency. They supposedly assassinated him because he was the Prime Minister of Sweden during the 1975 Occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm which ended in failure for the RAF. They claimed the assassination was carried out by the 'Holger Meins Commando.'
[edit]
Memorials
Plaque commemorating exact spot of Palme's murder
Palme's grave and monument at nearby Adolf Fredriks kyrka's cemeteryOn April 23, 1986, a part of the street Tunnelgatan in Stockholm was renamed Olof Palmes gata.
Olof Palme sétány (lit. "esplanade") is one of the central streets in the Budapest City Park. It also has a memorial stone for Anna Lindh.
In central Berlin there is a small square named Olof-Palme Platz.
Nicaragua National Conventions Center is called Olof Palme.
In south New Delhi there is a road called Olof Palme Marg.
In Hiddenhausen, Germany, there is a school named after Olof Palme, the Olof-Palme-Gesamtschule.
In Kiel, Germany, there is a street (the B76) called Olof-Palme-Damm.
In Mesestad Riem, Germany the site of the old Flughafen München-Riem, there is a street named "Olof Palme Straße" [8]
In Delft, Netherlands, there is a street named Olof Palmestraat. IKEA has built one of its stores there.
In Moscow, Russia, there is a street named Ulofa Pal'me. The Swedish embassy is located there.
In Athens, Greece, in the traditionally left wing municipality of Kaisargianni there is a small street as well as a large road called Olof Palme.
In Puglia, Italy, there is a perfectly circular road named Via Sven Olof Palme that encircles the town of Bitonto.
The main street of Kulu, a subprovince of Konya, Turkey, is named after Olof Palme. There is also a park with the same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme#Radicalism
Why does it seem that it is Swedish people, for example Dag Hammerskold and olof Palme who try to do what's right and then they get killed for it. Why we need more Swedish people running the world.