10 November 2003 Morning Edition

Kosovo News

· Elderly Kosovo Serb man attacked (Beta)
· Kosovo given timetable for democratic reform (AFP)
· Covic cancels Pristina talks, cites security warning (Beta)
· Covic, Holkeri on customs, standards in Kosovo-Metohija (Serbian Government)
· Police arrest three people in connection with the killing of Serb family in Kosovo (AP)
· U.N. police detain three in connection with Serb family murder (dpa)
· Police arrest three in search for killers of Serbs (AFP)

Regional News

· Serbia-Montenegro to provide some documents, witnesses to The Hague Tribunal (AP)
· Indicted former Yugoslav army chief vows not to surrender to UN court (AFP)
· Pavkovic: “I have no reason to surrender” (Beta)
· Covic confirms coalition to discuss elections (B92)
· Defence minister in London (Tanjug)

World News

· Some 300,000 Saddam opponents believed buried in 263 mass graves across Iraq (AP)
· Behind the mask of Lindh murder suspect (Guardian)

Elderly Kosovo Serb man attacked (Beta)

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Sunday – A 75-year-old Serb man is in hospital today after being attacked by a group of Albanians while tending to his cattle near the Kosovo town of Gnjilane.

Aleksandar Stojkovic told doctors in the Kosovska Mitrovica hospital that he had been pistol-whipped and kicked by some five or six Albanians in the village of Novo Brdo Paralovo, before they tied him up and pushed him into a nearby river.

After more than an hour, Stojkovic said he managed to free himself and reach his neighbor, who took him to the local clinic from where he was transferred to the Kosovska Mitrovica hospital.

Kosovo given timetable for democratic reform

By Jean-Eudes Barbier

BELGRADE, Nov 9 (AFP) - The United Nations and the ethnic Albanian majority have two years to improve the situation in Kosovo before, according to Washington, there will be any consideration of the territory's final status.

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman gave an indication of the task ahead when to told Serbian and Kosovar leaders last week that a review of reforms in the province could take place in 2005.

If the province meets UN-set benchmarks in areas such as multi-ethnic democracy, respect for human rights and security, Grossman said the international community would then consider the burning question of Kosovo's legal status -- independence or autonomy within Serbia.

"There would then be an evaluation of Kosovo's progress toward these UN standards by mid-2005, even earlier if progress is sufficient," Grossman said during a visit to the Kosovo capital Pristina.

"If Kosovo meets these standards we are prepared to begin the process to determine Kosovo's future status."

The breakaway southern Serbian province has been under UN administration since the end of the 1998-99 war between separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian forces loyal to then Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.

The province's majority ethnic-Albanians want independence, while Belgrade insists it is an integral part of Serbian territory. Four years after the war the two sides have refused to give an inch on their fundamental positions.
Grossman stressed that Washington had no preference one way or the other, as its main concern was the success of the ongoing reforms demanded by the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

"All the options are on the table. The US has taken no position one way or the other about what the final status of Kosovo is about," he said.

"The reason we have not done so is that we want to keep focused on standards," he said, referring to the policy of "standards before status" set by the UN administration in Kosovo.

Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi said Grossman's comments gave clarity to a complicated situation.

"We will work for the standards, not only to solve the Kosovo issue, but also for integration into the European Union and I think all is now much clearer," he said.

"Now the standards are palpable and measurable. Everyone knows the part to be played ... We now have a deadline and we will meet it on time."

Dragoljub Micunovic, the man tipped to become Serbia's next president after November 16 elections, told AFP that a lot needed to be done before Kosovo could claim to have satisfied even the basic standards of security.

He said there had been 1,300 murders "motivated by politics and nationalism" in Kosovo since the arrival of UNMIK and NATO peacekeepers in 1999.

"It's incredible that these things are still possible to this day and the international and local (Kosovo) institutions are not capable of controlling the situation," he said.

More than 200,000 Serbs have fled Kosovo since June 1999, fearing ethnic Albanian reprisal attacks for the brutality of Serbian rule under former strongman Milosevic.

So far only a handful have decided that it was safe enough to return, even though the repatriation of refugees is a key requirement of UNMIK's "standards before status" policy.

The 80,000 Serbs who remain in Kosovo -- out of a total population of about two million -- live in enclaves under constant threat of violence.

Covic cancels Pristina talks, cites security warning (Beta)

BELGRADE -- Saturday – Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic has blamed “security” concerns for his decision to cancel talks today in Pristina with the United Nations chief diplomat in Kosovo, Harri Holkeri.
“We received information that some kind of incident and attack were being planned in Pristina,” said Covic, adding: “Neither Holkeri nor I wanted to find out if this was true or not”.

Covic, who heads Belgrade’s Coordination Centre for Kosovo, said he had spoken to Holkeri by phone regarding customs and the transportation of goods from central Serbia to the UN-governed province.

Covic, Holkeri on customs, standards in Kosovo-Metohija

Serbian Government

Belgrade, Nov 8, 2003 - Head of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Nebojsa Covic and UNMIK Chief Harri Holkeri have discussed the customs regulations and transport of goods between central Serbia to the territory of Kosovo-Metohija as well as the implementation of the "standards before status" approach in the province.

In a telephone conversation on Saturday, the two officials agreed that standards in Kosovo must be clearly defined and measurable.

Covic said following the conversation that standards were not something that would lead to Kosovo's independence but rather to the creation of a society with three basic attributes - tolerance, multiethnicity, and peacefulness.

Police arrest three people in connection with the killing of Serb family in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ Police have arrested three people in the gruesome slayings of three Serbs in Kosovo earlier this year, a spokesman said Friday.

The three were arrested Thursday following a pre-dawn raid on the town of Obilic, 15 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of Pristina, said Derek Chappell, a spokesman for the U.N. police. No information was revealed about the identity or ethnic origin of those arrested.

The Kosovo Serbs were hacked to death and their house set ablaze in the June attack. The killing was unanimously condemned as a hate crime.

The charred bodies of Slobodan Stolic, 80, his wife, Radmila, 78, and their son, Ljubinko, 53, were found inside their home after authorities extinguished the fire. The U.N. mission in Kosovo had offered a reward of 50,000 (US$58,800) for information leading to the arrest of the killers.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since mid-1999, after a NATO air war halted a Serb crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. Tens of thousands of Serbs have fled the province since then to escape the threat of attacks by ethnic Albanian extremists.

U.N. police detain three in connection with Serb family murder

Pristina (dpa) - United Nations police have arrested five people during an operation in the town of Obilic, near Kosovo's capital Pristina, and have detained three of them, pending triple murder charges, a U.N. police official said Friday.

``We arrested five people during the operation. Two of them were released after statements were taken from them, and three are still in custody. They are being interrogated today,'' Angela Joseph, a U.N. police spokesperson told Deutsche Presse Agentur, dpa.

Early Thursday morning, 120 U.N. and local police officers began a search operation within and around the town of Obilic, where on the night of June 3 to 4, an elderly Serb couple and their son were killed and set on fire along with their house.

``The whole operation was in connection with the murder of the Stolic family, but we do not know what the charges against these individuals are,'' Joseph said, saying the investigation into the case was still ongoing.

``We confiscated some items during the operation, but this is being kept within the investigation,'' she explained.

The murder sparked strong criticism of the international authorities in Kosovo and anger among local Serbs and officials in Serbia's capital Belgrade, who saw the act as yet another ethnically motivated attack against the Serb minority community in Kosovo.

U.N. police has not made yet any comment on the motives of the murderer.

Police arrest three in search for killers of Serbs

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, Nov 7 (AFP) - Police arrested three people in a small town in Kosovo Friday, a day after starting a hunt for those responsible for the killing of a Serbian family there last June, an official said.

About 120 United Nations and local police combed Obilic, a small town just outside the capital Pristina, where the family were murdered in their home, Angela Joseph, spokesperson for the UN police told AFP.

"Three persons are being held in custody," Joesph said, without giving further details about the identity or ethnicity of the suspects.
It was not immediately clear what linked the suspects with the crime, which highlighted the ethnic divisions in the UN-administered province.

The elderly Stolic couple and their son were axed to death and their house set on fire in what many Serbs believe was an ethnic hate crime by Kosovo Albanian extremists.
UN officials have not classified the murders as ethnically motivated.

Hundreds of Serbs and non-Albanians have been killed or have disappeared since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999.

Kosovo came under UN control after a NATO bombing campaign forced Belgrade to withdraw its forces from the southern Serbian province.

Serbia-Montenegro to provide some documents, witnesses to The Hague Tribunal

By MISHA SAVIC

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ The government might declassify some documents and provide new witnesses for the war crimes trials of former army officers indicted by the U.N. court for alleged atrocities during the 1991 Croatian war, authorities said Friday.

Serbia-Montenegro's National Council for Cooperation with the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, said it would recommend that the government allow access to parts of the confidential archives to prosecutors and defense lawyers working on the case of Capt. Miroslav Radic.

Indicted along with three other officers for a massacre of some 200 civilians in the eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, Radic surrendered voluntarily to the U.N. court in May, pleading innocent.

Two others, Gen. Mile Mrksic and Col. Veselin Sljivancanin, are also in custody at the U.N. court. Both have also denied the charges.

They served under the former, autocratic leader Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted 2000. The current, pro-democratic leadership is under international pressure to cooperate in these and other cases involving Serb suspects.

The government said it is likely to accept the council's recommendation, which also requested that several current and former civil servants be exempted from the confidentiality duty in order to be able to testify in Mrksic's case.

The potential witnesses were not named, and no date was set for when the government could officially adopt the recommendations.
The council also said it has discussed the high-profile cases of four top army and police generals, indicted last month in relation to the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.

Authorities have been reluctant to meet The Hague tribunal's demand to extradite the four suspects _ former army commander Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, police general Vlastimir Djordjevic and the current deputy interior minister, Gen. Sreten Lukic.

Some of the council members have previously argued that only local trials would be acceptable for the four generals who have shown loyalty to the current, pro-Western leadership.

Meanwhile, Serbia's Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic reiterated that he had ``no intention of asking or ordering'' his deputy, Gen. Lukic, to resign or surrender to The Hague tribunal.

``It would undermine the security of the country,'' Mihajlovic said, praising Lukic and some of the other indictees for their roles in post-Milosevic reforms of the country.

Indicted former Yugoslav army chief vows not to surrender to UN court

BELGRADE, Nov 9 (AFP) - Former Yugoslav army chief Nebojsa Pavkovic, indicted for war crimes over alleged atrocities during the war in Kosovo, is refusing to give himself up to the UN tribunal, the Tanjug news agency said Sunday.

"I have no reason to surrender. I can only be taken prisoner and I cannot surrender," the agency quoted Pavkovic as saying in an interview with a local television station.

Pavkovic, army chief of staff during the rule of former president Slobodan Milosevic, and three other police and army generals have been charged with waging "a campaign of terror and violence against Kosovo Albanians" during the 1998-99 conflict.

An estimated 800,000 Kosovo Albanians were driven from their homes during the war, when rebels from the province's ethnic Albanian majority fought for independence from Serbia.

The indictments against Pavkovic and three others, unsealed last month, infuriated the Serbian government which said it would insist on trying the suspects in local courts instead of extraditing them to The Hague.

But the chief UN prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said the generals were too "highly responsible" to be entrusted to Serbian courts.

"Three of the suspects are definitely in Serbia and must be transferred to the Hague as soon as possible," a spokeswoman for Del Ponte said last month.
The four have been charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with forced expulsion, inhuman acts and murder, acts amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In particular. they are charged over the "expulsion of a substantial portion of the Kosovo Albanian population from the territory of the province of Kosovo in an effort to ensure continued Serbian control over the province."

But Pavkovic denied the allegations.
"The army did not commit any crime, and it was never ordered by anyone to do so," he said. "Neither I nor any of my commanders ordered such thing."

Pavkovic said that he had personally "fought with all my power to prevent crimes. If I had had a chance to find anyone who had committed a crime, I would probably have decided to execute him."

"Those who committed the crimes were arrested and handed to justice," he added.

Four former top Yugoslav officials have already been detained in The Hague over their actions during the Kosovo war, including Milosevic who faces more than 60 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1990s wars that tore apart the Balkans.

President Svetozar Marovic of Serbia and Montenegro, Yugoslavia's successor country, urged authorities Saturday to reconsider their reluctance to transfer the four indicted generals to the UN tribunal.

He warned that such a refusal might be seen as support for those who opposed cooperation with the tribunal, Tanjug quoted him as saying.

"They could ask why other people in Serbia have been protected when Milosevic was transferred to the ICTY," Marovic said. "The laws must be the same for everyone."

Pavkovic: “I have no reason to surrender” (Beta)

JAGODINA -- Sunday – Nebojsa Pavkovic, Yugoslavia’s former armed forces chief of staff, has ruled out surrendering to the United Nations war crimes tribunal after being indicted last month for war crimes in Kosovo.

“I have no reason to surrender. I’m a soldier, and our regulations state that a soldier never surrenders”, Pavkovic said late last night in an interview with Jagodina television Palma Plus.

The general insisted he had always tried to prevent crimes being committed in the province during the 1998-99 conflict. “I dismissed four brigade commanders, not because they ordered something, but because they did not carry out that which we ordered”, he said. Pavkovic blamed any war crimes that were committed on “individuals”, who he claimed were then arrested and tried.

Pavkovic said that he was in favour of cooperation with the tribunal in The Hague, but that that cooperation had to be “defined”.

Covic confirms coalition to discuss elections (B92)

BELGRADE -- Sunday – Deputy Serbian Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic has confirmed for Radio B92 that Serbia’s governing coalition will meet on Wednesday to discuss the possibility of calling parliamentary elections.

“The issues on the agenda will include the agreement signed at the last session of the DOS presidency and, of course, an analysis of all activities regarding the presidential elections. There will also be a discussion of the political situation in terms of an agreement on the slating of parliamentary elections in the republic”, said Covic, whose Democratic Alternative party currently chairs the coalition presidency.

Covic refused to say whether he thought the Serbian parliament would sit again in its current form.

Defence minister in London (Tanjug)

LONDON -- Sunday – Defence Minister Boris Tadic has described his visit to London as the most important that the defence ministry has undertaken this year.

In a statement for BBC radio, Tadic noted the importance of Great Britain in Belgrade’s process of integration into Europe. The minister, whose visit began today, said he expected talks to cover military cooperation between the two countries, as well as Belgrade’s cooperation with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague and “the fate of Ratko Mladic”, the former Bosnian Serb army chief.

Some 300,000 Saddam opponents believed buried in 263 mass graves across Iraq

By BASSEM MROUE and NIKO PRICE

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ Saddam Hussein's government is believed to have buried as many as 300,000 opponents in 263 mass graves that dot the Iraqi landscape, the top human rights official in the U.S.-led civilian administration said.

Sandy Hodgkinson said the administration has been sending forensic teams to investigate those grave sites reported to U.S. officials. So far, the existence of about 40 graves has been confirmed.

``We have found mass graves with women and children with bullet holes in their heads,'' she said Saturday.

U.S. President George W. Bush has referred to Iraqi mass graves frequently in recent months, saying they provide evidence that the war to drive Saddam from power was justified.

But some human rights activists have criticized the U.S.-led administration in Iraq for moving too slowly to protect grave sites and begin excavations, and have expressed skepticism that it will ever fully identify who is buried in the mass graves.

``There is just no way _ technologically, financially _ that they're going to deal with mass graves on this magnitude,'' said Susannah Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights in Boston.

The U.S.-led administration held a workshop Saturday to train dozens of Iraqis to find and protect the mass grave sites. Hodgkinson said the workers would be crucial in protecting the sites from desperate relatives trying to dig for evidence of their missing loved ones.

In the weeks after the U.S.-led war drove Saddam from power, relatives damaged some grave sites, using bulldozers that mangled bodies and scattering papers and clothing that could have been used to identify remains.

The largest mass grave discovered so far, a site near the southern town of Mahaweel believed to hold at least 3,115 bodies, was damaged by relatives searching for remains. But officials say most of the mass graves haven't been disturbed.

Mass graves ``tell the story of missing loved ones such as where, when and how they were killed,'' Hodgkinson said. ``Truth and proper burial is the first step toward reconciliation.''

Iraqi Human Rights Minister Abdul-Basit Turki said that in addition to families' need to find the bodies of missing relatives, excavating mass graves is important in building criminal cases against members of the former regime.

International tribunals handle prosecutions for atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, where tens of thousands of missing are believed buried in mass graves, and Rwanda, in which many of the 500,000 victims of a 100-day killing spree in 1994 were buried in communal pits.

But for Iraq, the United States has insisted any trials be conducted by a new Iraqi legal system that is still being developed.

Neither Iraq nor the United States are signatories to the International Criminal Court and it would take a vote of the U.N. Security Council to create a special tribunal for Iraq, which is considered unlikely.

Many human rights groups agree that Iraqis should lead the legal process, but say international participation is crucial for it to be legitimate and impartial. Some have been hesitant to participate in excavations before the legal system is in place.

``Mass graves really can corroborate witness testimony and documents which show what happened in a crime,'' Hodgkinson said, although she cautioned: ``a mass grave by itself won't tell you who did it.''

Hodgkinson said the majority of people buried in the mass graves are believed to be Kurds killed by Saddam in the 1980s after rebelling against the government and Shiites killed after an uprising following the 1991 Gulf War.

Hodgkinson said the investigation process would be similar to that used in Bosnia after its 1992-95 war. But she cautioned that if Bosnia is any indication, the process in Iraq will be long and complicated.

In Bosnia, she said, it has taken nine years to unearth 8,000 of the 30,000 bodies believed buried in mass graves.

Human rights activists say U.S. authorities in Iraq have been much slower to address the problem than were authorities in Bosnia. In Bosnia, said Sam Zia-Zarifi of Human Rights Watch, ``within the first year there were 25 teams in and a (U.N.) tribunal in place.''

In Iraq, some international teams that were hoping to begin their work before winter have delayed their arrival because of violence, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.

At a donor conference last month, more than US$100 million was requested for uncovering mass graves. The donations, which are expected to come in the form of equipment and personnel, would be used over five years, Hodgkinson said.

Behind the mask of Lindh murder suspect

A young Serb who was fascinated by knives waits in jail to be charged with the murder of Sweden's Foreign Minister. In this report, we uncover the life of a cold loner who was desperate to find fame by any means

Ed Vulliamy in Stockholm The Observer

He festers in a prison cell with no company but his own and those of the demons that haunt him.

Mijailo Mihajlovic is soon to be formally charged with a assassination that stunned Europe - the stabbing of one of the best loved and most widely admired politicians of her time, Sweden's Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh.

She died a day after being attacked on 10 September while out with a friend, and without a security guard, at the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in Stockholm city centre, shopping for something to wear for a television debate on the euro.

According to prosecutors, Mihajlovic shows no emotion, not of fear, nor anxiety, remorse or even defiance - his lawyer says he will deny murder. He eats his meals alone at Kronobergshaket jail, and takes limited exercise in a covered-in yard. Otherwise, he sits motionless and silent in front of video games or a television, screened of all coverage of his case.

The detailed indictment expected in December, will charge the 24-year-old, born of a Serbian family migrated to Sweden, with a crime that confounded a nation priding itself on civility, transparency and enlightenment - but which has suffered its second major assassination in a generation, after that of Olof Palme in 1986.

Lindh's killing was the fourth of a leading statesperson in postwar Europe: Palme, General Franco's Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, Lord Mountbatten and Italian former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. While Palme's case remains a mystery, the others were the work of determined revolutionaries - Basque separatists, the IRA and Red Brigades.

But Lindh was a different politician: close to her people, a devoted mother, defender of the oppressed - Palestinians, Kurds, Bosnians and Kosovars. Also by contrast she fell victim, allegedly, to a man of few focused political beliefs beyond a vague Serbian nationalism mingled with a history of psychiatric disorder and violence.

According to a friend of Mihajlovic, he decided to kill Lindh after a speech she made supporting Nato strikes against Serbia and Serbian troops in Kosovo in March 1999.

But the mind that allegedly hatched the assassination harboured deep psychological disorders as well as the proclaimed loyalty to former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. For years, Mihajlovic had been in and out of the authorities' grasp, in borstal, and on a particular Swedish brand of psychiatric probation.

Agneta Blidberg, vice-head of the prosecution service leading this investigation, is convinced she has Lindh's killer. Swedish police last week confirmed to The Observer DNA samples taken from the knife with which Lindh was stabbed, and from a baseball cap discarded by her killer, matched genetic material from Mihajlovic. The DNA analyses were conducted by experts at the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham.

Mihajlovic's capture has been almost as compelling as his past is gruesome - at one point during the hunt, he was detained, but released.

Pressure on the authorities was acute - their failure to find Palme's killer having become a matter of national shame. At first, the hunt went badly wrong. Per Olof Svensson, an upper-class man, aged 36, known for his neo-Nazi sympathies, was detained. He had been arrested before - for daubing swastikas around town.

But from 17 September, acting on a tip-off from a family friend, police had been tailing Mihajlovic. According to press reports, he had - after the murder - gone to a psychiatric outpatients' department asking for treatment, been questioned, and let go.

On 24 September, Mihajlovic was taken into custody after a special squad scaled a wall of the block of flats where he lived in a working-class suburb south of Stockholm.

According to leaked police reports, Mihajlovic took an expensive taxi ride home from town after Lindh's death, to find his mother and her friend 'Marie' watching the coverage on television. Mrs. Mihajlovic immediately recognized her son on a security video clip from the NK store. 'Marie' says Mihajlovic then took a nap. His mother disappeared and is believed to be in protective custody.

A trawl around Mihajlovic's favourite clubs and bars reveals a man well known but little liked. He was, say acquaintances, obsessed by fame, desperate to achieve it by killing someone famous. He reportedly told one friend: 'If I killed someone famous I would have criminal status, and be able to jump the queues for all the hottest bars'.

This obsession extended to him insisting Tom Cruise be appointed as his lawyer, convinced his idol would get him off after seeing a film in which Cruise plays a high-powered attorney.

Aged seven, Mihajlovic was sent with his sister to live with their grandparents in a village near Belgrade, returning to Sweden as teenagers, to a violent home. Family acquaintances do not speak well of the suspect's father, who holds fervent Serbian nationalist views.

But Mihajlovic was not, it seems, politically motivated. At 17 he was arrested for attacking his father with a knife, and sent to juvenile prison. He was obsessed by knives, and was twice arrested for weapons possession and for harassing a 15-year-old girl who did not return his attentions. He was convicted of threatening to kill her family, and put on psychiatric probation.

On the night of 12 March 1999, Nato aircraft flew bombing missions over Yugoslavia in response to the 'ethnic cleansing' of Albanian civilians in Kosovo. Lindh was Foreign Minister of a non-Nato country that prides itself on the role of global broker, but, having sided with such causes as Bosnia and Kosovo's Albanians, she spoke in support of the intervention. It may have been her death sentence.

Tension ensued within Sweden's large ex-Yugoslav community - including many Serbs loyal to Milosevic. Mihajlovic was apparently anxious to volunteer for service - either in a Stockholm turf war, or in a unit departing to Kosovo.

Serbians operate a muscular presence in Stockholm's criminal underworld, which hit the headlines in February 1998 with the murder of gangland leader, Dragan Joksovic, and again with a shoot-out at one of Mihajlovic's favourite pubs, over cigarette smuggling.

The Joksovic murder was linked to the now deceased Belgrade gangster 'Arkan', a confidant of Milosevic, in a dispute over protection rackets in Sweden. Mihajlovic tried to attach himself to the gangster's circle, only to be brushed off. 'Too crazy,' they said.

In the run-up to Sweden's vote on the euro, Lindh was denounced for her pro-euro stance. Her Ministry asked the security services to give her protection. The request was turned down.

At 12.45pm on 10 September, Mihajlovic was seen around Stockholm's Central Station at the time Lindh arrived from her hometown of Nykoping. At 4.10 Lindh was at the NK store where Mihajlovic was seen 'acting nervously'. Mihajlovic allegedly said he then heard an inner voice saying: 'Do it now, kill her'.