SWEDEN: Ex-Secret Agent Denies Killing Palme For South Africa

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

KYRENIEA, Northern Cyprus, Oct 3 1996 (IPS) - The man that former South African death squad leader Eugene de Kock is reportedly ready to name as the killer of Swedish premier Olaf Palme, has told IPS that the apartheid regime’s secret police always planned to frame him for the murder — then kill him.

Former Swedish secret service agent Bertil Wedin denied killing Palme in a interview at his home in Kyrenia, in Turkish held northern Cyprus. He says he was there on the night when Palme was gunned down on a Stockholm street on Feb. 28, 1986, but only heard the news a few days later.

“On March 1, 1986, I was in Kyrenia, watching videotapes in the bed together with my wife when I heard of Palme’s death from a BBC broadcast. I was shocked,” Wedin said. “Of course I did not kill him.”

He then details his own theory — that the real assassins planned to frame him as the killer and then murder him.

A number of other men have been publicly implicated in the killing by de Kock and Dirk Coetzee, his successor as commander of a South African covert operations unit.

“According to my own information, not one person, Olaf Palme, but two people, he and I, were the targets of the assassins.

“The killers thought that I would be in Stockholm that day. They were to kill us both the same day so I would be blamed as Palme’s assassin, the files would be shelved and the case closed.”

Swedish TV Tuesday reported that Wedin was about to be identified as Palme’s murderer by de Kock, former leader of a covert police unit notorious for killing and torturing anti-apartheid activists.

Already convicted of six murders and 83 lesser crimes, and speaking at a hearing of mitigation of sentence, he has reportedly said he will expose Palme’s assassin as “a Swedish agent now living in a Mediterranean island” at the end of the year. The hearings in mitigation continue next week.

And on Wednesday the Stockholm Expressen paper published an interview with an unidentified ex-member of the South African secret police, who claimed that if Palme’s murder had been ordered by the apartheid regime, then it was carried out by Wedin.

There have been a welter of other accusations and counter- claims involving Palme’s death in the past few days.

Between them, de Kock and Coetzee have also implicated former soldier Anthony White, former apartheid spy Craig Williamson and Phillip Powell, now a official with the South African opposition Zulu Inkatha party. All have denied the charges. However Coetzee says White, who now lives in Mozambique, was Palme’s killer.

Wedin was relaxed and confident throughout the interview with IPS and a group of Swedish journalists. His dry comments were carefully considered, not spontaneous. “I do not know why de Kock implies me,” he says. “He must be crazy.”

Wedin is an oddball himself. He happily talks of his far-right political affiliations and is equally happy to identify himself as ‘Middle East correspondent’ for the Swedish ultra-right journal ‘Kontra’ (Counter-guerrilla). He confirms that he served as a agent with the Swedish secret service (SAPO).

He was accused, but never convicted, of a 1982 burglary at the London office of a black South African political party, but denies Swedish media reports that he is linked to the U.S., South African or Turkish secret services.

Wedin says he has his “own suspicions” as to who really killed Palme, who backed the killer and why they have never been caught.

“But I cannot elaborate on them — for then I would face a real threat,” he says mysteriously.

Swedish Social Democrat prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated on Feb. 28 1986, in a busy street outside a Stockholm cinema.

He was an early crusader against apartheid and led the first calls for international sanctions against South Africa, while his government gave extensive support to the African National Congress (ANC) while present South African president Nelson Mandela was serving out his 27 years in apartheid jails.

A petty criminal, Christer Pettersson, was tried for the murder in 1989, but acquitted. Despite years of investigation the Swedish police have consistently failed to find a firm lead, though a wide range of scenarios have been presented, including a link to the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

On Wednesday the daily Dagens Nyheter claimed that Wedin faked this link with the PKK, which has battled Ankara security forces in Turkey since 1984, and passed it to a journalist on the Turkish daily Hurriyet. A major police sweep of PKK sympathisers in Sweden followed but investigators soon gave up the lead.

Wedin denied any part in promoting the PKK link, according to Dagens Nyheter, to throw the police off the trail of a South African connection. He says his research files were stolen from his home in Stockholm in 1987 while he was in hospital.

“Then a report appeared in Turkish daily Hurriyet regarding PKK involvement in Palme assassination, but I myself never implicated the PKK.”

Asked why he should spend so much time privately investigating the killing, he replied: “It was my national duty”. He says he has uncovered clues that could help clarify the Palme assassination but says he has failed to get the attention of Swedish officials.

Wedin, 56, lives in a two-story house in the Turkish occupied Northern Cyprus city of Kyrenia, known to the Turkish Cypriots as Girne, in a neighbourhood where Turkish police officers mainly reside. He presently works for the English language service of the Northern Cyprus Turkish Republic’s official Bayrak Radio.

Married to a British woman, he teaches three children at home. A fourth daughter is a student at the American University in Nicosia.

He moved to Northern Cyprus in 1985. According to his statements during his trial on charges of burglary of anti-apartheid groups in London, Wedin — though he now denies links with the South African secret police — said he established links with the apartheid regime after moving to Britain in 1976. The court heard that he was hired to act on their behalf there for 1,000 pounds a month.

Journalist Jan Helin of the Swedish daily Aftonbladet says that the Turkish secret service (MIT) cooperated with the South Africans to protect Wedin, who had set himself up as the international head of a pro-apartheid group called Victims Against Terrorism.

The self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is not recognised by any other country in the world but Turkey — making Kyrenia one of the safer corners of the world for the kind of person who might wish to avoid the attentions of foreign police and possible extradition.

In Johannesburg Mandela promised Thursday that his government would take every step to ensure justice was done if apartheid South Africa was found to be involved in the killing of Palme.

But Mandela said he could not make a definite statement until investigations ended with further pre-sentencing hearings for de Kock scheduled for next week. “We do not know how he (de Kock) will hold up to cross-examination,” he added.