130 confessions to Palme murder

About 130 people have confessed to the murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, but the case remains unsolved 25 years after he was gunned down on his way home from a cinema in Stockholm, investigators have said.

The last confession came a few years ago, but was dismissed along with the others, said Stig Edqvist, who heads the three-man police unit in charge of the case.

The case would have been dropped on 28 February, the 25th anniversary of the shooting in 1986, but a law change last year means the investigation can go on indefinitely.

The investigation's files are so voluminous they now cover 740ft of shelf space in the police archives. In terms of size, the case probably exceeds the investigations of the assassination of US president John F Kennedy and the Lockerbie bombing, Mr Edqvist said yesterday.

Two to three tips still come in daily, but investigators admitted they were not getting any closer to solving the case. "To be honest we don't have any really, really hot lead right now," prosecutor Kerstin Skarp said.

Mr Edqvist had no updated figures on how much the investigation had cost, but said it hit nearly 50 million five years ago.

Mr Palme, who led a left-leaning Social Democratic government, had given his bodyguards the night off and was walking home with his wife when the killer shot him twice in the back.

The only man tried for the murder, Christer Pettersson, was acquitted on appeal.