A Swedish appeals court on Thursday overturned a life sentence against the man who fatally stabbed Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh last year, ordering him instead into psychiatric care.
The Svea Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling that Mijailo Mijailovic, 25, committed murder when he knifed Lindh repeatedly on September 10, but said that rather than spending life behind bars for the crime he needed psychiatric care.
The appeals court said Mijailovic "committed the crime under the influence of a serious psychiatric disorder and he still suffers from this disorder". It cited experts who concluded that he suffered from an "unspecified psychotic syndrome".
Lindh died of her injuries on September 11, a day after Mijailovic knifed her repeatedly in the stomach, chest and arms while she was shopping at a Stockholm department store without a bodyguard.
Her murder sent Sweden into a state of shock 17 years after the still unsolved 1986 assassination of prime minister Olof Palme.
Mijailovic was jailed for life by a Stockholm district court in March but had appealed the ruling, arguing that although he inflicted Lindh's fatal injuries he did not intend to take her life. Intent to kill is a prerequisite for a murder conviction in Sweden.
"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," a unanimous appeals court ruled.
While he had hoped to be freed entirely from the murder charge, Mijailovic had through his lawyer Peter Althin asked the court to order him into psychiatric care if it did choose to uphold the murder conviction.