Lindh Murder Suspect Remanded in Custody

Lindh Murder Suspect Remanded in Custody
A judge on Friday identified a Swedish man of Serbian origin as the main suspect in the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh and ordered him held for at least two more weeks while investigators gather more evidence. Judge Goeran Nilsson called Mijailo Mijailovic, 24, a flight risk and said he could jeopardize the investigation if freed from police custody. The decision gives authorities two weeks to investigate and prepare charges. Mijailovic, who was arrested Wednesday but not charged, was escorted into the courtroom by four guards, a yellow, jail-issue prison blanket covering his head to shield him from reporters. "He's been detained, but we are miles away from a conviction in a trial," Mijailovic's lawyer, Peter Althin, said. "He is not guilty until there is a sentence." Lindh was stabbed in the chest, stomach and arms on Sept. 10 while shopping with a friend at a crowded department store in downtown Stockholm. She died from her injuries a day later. Police arrested Mijailovic on Wednesday, the same day they released a previous suspect. Althin declined to comment on the evidence presented during the closed hearing, citing a court order not to give details of the case. But he criticized the judge's decision to release Mijailovic's name, which was classified before the detention hearing. Nilsson said he made Mijailovic's name public because the investigation had a reached the point where it wasn't necessary to protect his identity. "This is an open society and this person is a suspect on probable grounds and there is no reason to keep it classified," Nilsson told The Associated Press. Court documents show that Mijailovic has prior convictions of stabbing his father repeatedly in the back with a knife, illegal gun possession and making threatening phone calls to two women. A psychiatric evaluation in connection with the 1997 trial for the stabbing of his father, who survived the attack, found Mijailovic "in great need of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic efforts," but there were no medical grounds to sentence him to psychiatric care. He was sentenced to probation, court documents show. Nilsson ordered another psychiatric evaluation of Mijailovic during the Friday hearing. News of the arrest rattled the Mijailovics' old family home in Pruzatovac, Serbia-Montenegro, a village 25 miles south of Belgrade, built largely with the money that three generations of this family earned over the years as guest workers in Sweden. "I'm so ashamed, I could just die," said Zivota Mijailovic, 78, as he looked at a photograph of his grandson. "Swedes were good to us; they gave us jobs, we owe them almost everything we have," added his grandfather, who emigrated from Serbia to Sweden in 1970. He moved back to Serbia in 1996. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Mijailo Mijalovic is seen in this undated police photo, Friday Sept. 26, 2003. (AP Photo/HO)

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