Killer lied about sanity to avoid jail

The man who killed Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh has said he faked mental illness during his trial in an attempt to get a less severe sentence.

Mijailo Mijailovic, 32, was quoted by the daily Expressen yesterday as saying that his knife attack on Ms Lindh in a Stockholm department store in 2003 was motivated by a hatred of politicians, whom he blamed for his own failings in life.

His earlier claim that voices in his head had encouraged him to stab Ms Lindh was a ploy to receive psychiatric care instead of a prison sentence, he told the Swedish newspaper.

“I was rambling to get psychiatric care. Everything was made up. I didn’t hear voices,” he said. “The more you ramble, the more the doctors listen to you. But there are doctors who are difficult to fool, and there are those who are easy to fool.”

Ms Lindh died a day after Mijailovic stabbed her, while in Stockholm department store NK in September 2003.

An appeals court sentenced Mijailovic to psychiatric care but the Swedish Supreme Court later overturned the ruling and gave him life in prison.

In the interview, Mijailovic said only days before Ms Lindh’s murder he had considered attacking Lars Leijonborg, then leader of Sweden’s Liberal Party, during a rally.

“I believed politicians were the root of all evil,” he told Expressen.