Volkswacht Bodensee - Not enough evidence against Swedish PM murder suspect: prosecutor

Palme was gunned down on February 28, 1986, after leaving a Stockholm cinema with his wife and despite a years-long investigation nobody has been charged with the crime.

Chief prosecutor Krister Petersson closed the case in 2020 after naming the chief suspect as Stig Engstrom, a former advertising consultant who had died in 2000.

But Director of Prosecution Lennart Gune poured cold water over that assertion on Thursday, saying the evidence was "not sufficient to form the basis for identifying him as the designated perpetrator".

Palme was shot in the back by his assailant, who fled the scene and left the 59-year-old to die in a pool of blood on the street.

More than 10,000 people were questioned over the years, and 134 people confessed to the crime -- though none were credibly tied to the assassination.

Petersson said in 2020 he decided to close the investigation since he could not charge a suspect who had already died.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority said on Thursday a journalist had asked them in September to review the decision to close the case.

The journalist had raised "the possibility of using new DNA technology to obtain evidence through new analyses and samples from Olof Palme's coat", the authority said.

Gune said it was "not legally possible to reopen the investigation as long as the closure decision is based on the suspect being deceased".

He therefore needed to review the evidence against "the designated perpetrator", and had concluded it was not strong enough.

However, he said there were still no grounds to reopen the investigation.

"Based on the investigation material that is now available, it is not possible to prove who the perpetrator is and further investigation cannot be assumed to change the evidence in a decisive way," Gune said.

P.Vogel--VB