Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2020 6:10 pm
by lpm
Prime Minister of Sweden! Assassinated!
He went to the cinema with his wife to see a film called The Mozart Brothers. Went without bodyguards. On leaving he was shot in the back with a Magnum (the gun) at close range.
Looks like a pre-planned assassination rather than opportunistic. No suspects yet named. No comment on whether Mrs Palme otherwise enjoyed the film.
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Up to date with the news there, lpm. 12,500 days without justice!
An update on the case is expected imminently.
According to a Guardian article dated 16th May 2019?
According to the news today
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 6:38 am
by lpm
Is it any less interesting just because its time is very very slightly different from current time? What's 34 years to the universe? Does a chess enthusiast get less enjoyment from playing out the recorded moves of a classic game between two grandmasters if it's 34 years after instead of a day after?
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 6:44 am
by Woodchopper
Looking at the Wiki list 16 European heads of government were assassinated in the interwar period, and only four between the end of the Second World War and today.
Since the end of WW2 Olof Palme was the only assassinated head of the government of a fully democratic European state. His death still is exceptional.
(ETA Only counting proper recognized states)
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Looking at the Wiki list 16 European heads of government were assassinated in the interwar period, and only four between the end of the Second World War and today.
Since the end of WW2 Olof Palme was the only assassinated head of the government of a fully democratic European state. His death still is exceptional.
(ETA Only counting proper recognized states)
This got me thinking about near-misses, those who have survived credible assassination attempts (the Brighton bombing in the UK nearly killing Margaret Thatcher for example). going through this list, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union there have been a fair few. Considering only heads of state, not other senior politicians and excluding the Pope who could perhaps be called a head of state also.
1952 Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
1962 Charles de Gaulle, President of France
1968 Georgios Papadopoulos, President of Greece
1984 Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1987 Turgut Özal, President of Turkey
1991 John Major, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1995 Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia
1995 Kiro Gligorov, President of Macedonia
1996 Pavlo Lazarenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine
1998 Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia
2002 Jacques Chirac, President of France
2005 Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo
2009 Queen Beatrix & Prince Willem-Alexander, the Netherlands
Seems that about a quarter of assassination attempts against European heads of state since 1945 have succeeded, but thankfully they're still pretty rare.
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Looking at the Wiki list 16 European heads of government were assassinated in the interwar period, and only four between the end of the Second World War and today.
Since the end of WW2 Olof Palme was the only assassinated head of the government of a fully democratic European state. His death still is exceptional.
(ETA Only counting proper recognized states)
This got me thinking about near-misses, those who have survived credible assassination attempts (the Brighton bombing in the UK nearly killing Margaret Thatcher for example). going through this list, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union there have been a fair few. Considering only heads of state, not other senior politicians and excluding the Pope who could perhaps be called a head of state also.
1952 Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
1962 Charles de Gaulle, President of France
1968 Georgios Papadopoulos, President of Greece
1984 Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1987 Turgut Özal, President of Turkey
1991 John Major, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1995 Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia
1995 Kiro Gligorov, President of Macedonia
1996 Pavlo Lazarenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine
1998 Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia
2002 Jacques Chirac, President of France
2005 Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo
2009 Queen Beatrix & Prince Willem-Alexander, the Netherlands
Seems that about a quarter of assassination attempts against European heads of state since 1945 have succeeded, but thankfully they're still pretty rare.
Interesting, good to be reminded of the role played by chance. Though I guess the there would also have been a lot of assassination attempts in the interwar period as well so the trend might be similar (though perhaps modern medicine and things like kevlar armour mean that fewer attempts are successful).
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Looking at the Wiki list 16 European heads of government were assassinated in the interwar period, and only four between the end of the Second World War and today.
Since the end of WW2 Olof Palme was the only assassinated head of the government of a fully democratic European state. His death still is exceptional.
(ETA Only counting proper recognized states)
This got me thinking about near-misses, those who have survived credible assassination attempts (the Brighton bombing in the UK nearly killing Margaret Thatcher for example). going through this list, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union there have been a fair few. Considering only heads of state, not other senior politicians and excluding the Pope who could perhaps be called a head of state also.
1952 Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
1962 Charles de Gaulle, President of France
1968 Georgios Papadopoulos, President of Greece
1984 Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1987 Turgut Özal, President of Turkey
1991 John Major, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1995 Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia
1995 Kiro Gligorov, President of Macedonia
1996 Pavlo Lazarenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine
1998 Eduard Shevardnadze, President of Georgia
2002 Jacques Chirac, President of France
2005 Ibrahim Rugova, President of Kosovo
2009 Queen Beatrix & Prince Willem-Alexander, the Netherlands
Seems that about a quarter of assassination attempts against European heads of state since 1945 have succeeded, but thankfully they're still pretty rare.
I'd forgotten about the IRA mortar attack on John Major.
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
(The insurance guy who had access to weapons through a friend).
It's a surprisingly flimsy case - no new evidence, no clear motive, lots of reliance on circumstantial stuff like "he was in a gun club" (though this may be highly unusual for Sweden, I suppose). All they seem to have done is gone through old witness statements and noticed that his were inconsistent with other witnesses', which isn't even that surprising if he was drunk.
Based on the article lpm posted it sounds like the original investigators got distracted by outlandish theories and persued them at the expense of the evidence under their nose.
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2020 1:35 pm
by Bird on a Fire
It's a busy week for old cases. It really sounds like there's going to be a resolution to the McCann case any day now (and again the original investigators persued a single line of inquiry for a decade and seem to have missed obvious stuff).
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
It's a busy week for old cases. It really sounds like there's going to be a resolution to the McCann case any day now (and again the original investigators persued a single line of inquiry for a decade and seem to have missed obvious stuff).
When there are loads of investigators on a case do they sometimes get sucked into a groupthink kind of state which makes this sort of thing happen? I’m sure I’ve heard of this phenomenon before, when an old cold case is almost blindingly obvious in hindsight. Obviously hindsight is 20:20, but still
Re: Olof Palme assassinated outside cinema in Stockholm
