Swedish investigators have found the gun used to assassinate prime minister Olof Palme in 1986, a figure close to Sweden’s government has claimed.
Prosecutors will today reveal whether they are pressing charges or closing the investigation into the murder, which remains unsolved and which current PM Stefan Lofven has described as an ‘open wound’.
Daniel Suhonen, a former speechwriter in the ruling Social Democratic party, told Aftonbladet that politicians had been informed: ‘They have the murder weapon’.
Other reports claim that South African intelligence officials met Swedish investigators in March to hand over intelligence about Palme, a critic of apartheid.
Swedish prime minister Olof Palme (pictured) was murdered in February 1986 in a killing which has stumped investigators for decades
Flowers left at the site the day after Palme was assassinated, at a Stockholm crime scene which was not properly cordoned off at the time
Palme was killed on February 28, 1986, after leaving a Stockholm cinema with his wife Lisbet to walk home, having dismissed his bodyguards for the evening.
An unidentified attacker shot Palme in the back and fled, leaving the 59-year-old dying in a pool of blood on the pavement.
More than 10,000 people have been questioned over the years, but authorities do not currently have anyone placed under formal suspicion.
Chief prosecutor Krister Petersson, who took over the probe in 2017, will announce his decision at 9.30am local time.
Experts and Swedish media have in recent months suggested that the most likely scenario would be that the case will be closed, because the main suspects speculated about in the media in recent years are all dead.
Petersson said in February that if the main suspect was dead, that would justify closing the case as a dead person cannot be prosecuted.
Over the years, more than 130 people have claimed responsibility for the murder and the case files take up some 820ft of shelf space.
Thousands of people have been questioned over the crime, which became a national obsession, with an army of amateur sleuths chasing the culprit and the 50million kronor (£4.3million) reward.
Christer Pettersson – a petty criminal and drug addict who in a bizarre coincidence shares a nearly identical name with the current chief prosecutor – was convicted of the crime in 1989 after Palme’s widow identified him in a widely-criticised line-up.
But he was freed months later by an appeals court which dismissed her testimony on a technicality.
Pettersson died in 2004, while Palme’s widow passed away in 2018.
The news that their charismatic leader had been brutally killed shocked Swedes, and their open and peaceful society is said to have ‘lost its innocence’ that day.
Among the leads investigated over the decades have been Turkey’s Kurdish rebel group the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Swedish military and police, and the South African secret service. Palme was highly critical of apartheid.
Palme was prime minister between 1969 and 1976, and again from 1982 to his death in 1986.
A Social Democrat known as a great orator, Palme was a controversial figure who infuriated Washington with his vocal opposition to the US war in Vietnam.
He also backed communist governments in Cuba and Nicaragua.
At home, he laid the foundation for Sweden’s modern-day gender equality, but was at odds with the country’s business leaders and military, and spoke out against nuclear power.
Crowds line the route of Palme’s funeral procession in March 1986, two weeks after he was shot dead after leaving a cinema with his wife
People lay flowers the day after the killing in Stockholm. A petty criminal was found guilty of the murder in 1989 but the conviction was later overturned
Some theories suggest Palme was the victim of a lone gunman acting out of ideological hatred.
One such person whose name has surfaced repeatedly in the media is Stig Engstrom, also known as ‘the Skandia man’, who opposed Palme’s left-wing views and was near the murder scene.
Police questioned him as a witness but deemed him unreliable as he changed his story several times. He died in 2000.
By all accounts, Swedish police botched the early part of the investigation, and were accused of being disorganised and unprofessional.
Crucially, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to walk around and destroy potential forensic evidence, a blunder that still haunts investigators today.
Even if prosecutors decide to close the investigation, it could still be re-opened in the future should new evidence emerge.