Assassination
Security had never been a major issue, and Olof Palme could often be seen without any bodyguard protection. The night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme in the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on 28 February 1986, the couple was attacked by an assassin. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range. A second shot was fired at Lisbet Palme, the bullet grazing her back. She survived without serious injuries.
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 also tried to help the prime minister. He was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival at 00:06 CET the next day. Mrs Palme's wound was treated and she recovered. Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson immediately assumed the duties of Prime Minister and as new leader of the Social Democratic Party, a post he would retain until 1991 (and then again in 1994-1996).
Two years later, Christer Pettersson (d. 2004), a small-time criminal and drug addict, was arrested, tried and convicted for Palme's murder. Pettersson's conviction was later overturned on appeal to the Svea Court of Appeal. As a result the crime remains unsolved and a number of alternative theories as to who carried out the murder have since been proposed.
Palme had strong opinions on both the world powers in the middle of the Cold War. In fact, Swedish–American relations were at a record low due to Palme's rough criticism of the Vietnam War, which had only been over for a decade at the time, and the placement of nuclear weapons in Europe, which he opposed. Therefore there is a popular conspiracy theory that he was assassinated by either the Soviet KGB or the American CIA. South African assassin Athol Visser also discusses his involvement in the book Devil Incarnate describing it as part of P W Botha's apartheid government's campaign to silence domestic and foreign enemies .
In January 2011 the German magazine Focus cited German interrogation records in connection with another investigation from 2008 as showing that the assassination had been carried out by an operative of the Yugoslavian UDBA who now lives in Zagreb, Croatia.
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