The confessed killer of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh had his life jail sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court on Thursday after he appealed for leniency saying he was mentally ill when he stabbed her. Mijailo Mijailovic, the 25-year-old son of Serb immigrants, admitted to a frenzied knife attack last year on the 46-year-old woman who had been tipped as the next prime minister. But he blamed "voices" in his head and argued he should not be jailed.
Convicted of murder in March and sentenced to life, he was then ordered into psychiatric care after a first appeal decided he was mentally ill and not responsible for his actions.
But public prosecutors and the Lindh family appealed to Sweden's highest court for the original life jail term to stick, while Mijailovic's defence argued for the murder charge to be replaced with a lesser charge of manslaughter.
"Even though Mijailo Mijailovic, due to his psychiatric disorder, may have had a limited ability to control his actions, the circumstances are such that the punishment, as the district court found, should be life in prison," the Supreme Court said. "The investigation cannot be judged to give sufficient support for the conclusion that (his) psychological disorder at the time of the crime, or now, is of a psychotic nature."
Lindh, who was married and had two children, was killed in a hail of knife blows in an apparently unmotivated attack while out shopping. She died of her wounds the next day.
"I feel a great sense of relief," Prime Minister Goran Persson said. "This is the final authority and we have come to the end of the road with this. That feels liberating.
"For me and the children it feels good that the drawn-out trial is finally over," Lindh's husband Bo Holmberg said in a statement. "It's a shame the motive was never revealed. If you are not seriously psychologically disturbed, you have a motive."