Gunnar Pettersson

On the day Simon Hayward was released from a Swedish prison and returned to England, the Independent reported that a senior official in the Swedish Justice Department had declared himself against punishing convicts who attempt to escape from prison, because it is ‘a natural reaction’: ‘If you were in a prison,’ he asked a seminar, ‘wouldn’t you start thinking of how to get out?’

Facts are hard to come by in the Olof Palme case. On the corner of Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan in central Stockholm, at 21 minutes past 11 p.m. on 28 February 1986, the Swedish Prime Minister was shot dead with a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. Despite the number of eye-witnesses, 23 in all, no more is known about the murderer than that he was dressed in dark clothes and escaped by the Tunnelgatan alleyway.