Court Overturns Lindh Killer's Life Sentence

Mijailo Mijailovic, the man who killed Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in 2003, is expected to be moved from the prison where he had begun his life sentence to after an appeals court ordered him into a secure psychiatric facility. The court ruled that he should be moved after doctors carrying out tests on him came to the conclusion he was suffering a mental illness.

Mijailovic would have gone to prison for 15 years, the normal term in Sweden for those sentenced to life, but now he faces being placed in a psychiatric institute for criminals.

However, there are no time limits for psychiatric patients, and some experts say he could be set free in a matter of months if deemed healthy.

Initial assessment labelled killer sane

At the time of his arrest, Mijailovic was assessed for psychiatric problems but the initial assessment concluded he was not mentally ill when he stabbed Lindh on Sept. 10 last year while she was out shopping in a Stockholm department store. The hugely popular minister died of her injuries a day later.

While the appeals court said that 25-year-old Mijailovic was a "traumatized person with significant psychiatric problems" and needed psychiatric care, it did uphold the guilty verdict for the murder of Lindh. Mijailovic's legal team had hoped to have the charge reduced to manslaughter arguing that their defendant had not intended to kill the politician.

Lawyers called Lindh's murder "coincidence"

Lawyer Peter Althin had told the court Mijailovic had heard voices telling him to attack Lindh, but that they said nothing about killing her and added that the killing was an "impulsive act" and that it was a "coincidence" Mijailovic's victim was Anna Lindh.

However, the court took a different view, ruling: "It has been proven that Mijailo Mijailovic was completely indifferent as to whether Anna Lindh would die of her stab wounds and he therefore had intent to kill."