Top judge slammmed for Palme probe meet up

Swedish Supreme Court justice and former Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz has drawn fire from the high court's Chief Justice over an apparent attempt to get involved in the ongoing investigation into the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme.

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"From my point of view, it's not compatible with the role of a judge to become involved in criminal investigations," Supreme Court Chief Justice Marianne Lundius told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

Her comments came following the publication on Wednesday in the Expressen newspaper of emails between Lambertz and Prosecutor General Anders Perklev in which Lambertz requested a meeting with Deputy Prosecutor General Kerstin Skarp, who is responsible for the investigation into Palme's killing.

In the emails, Lambertz writes that he "due to various reasons have been reflecting lately on the Palme investigation" and that he has experienced "a degree of frustration over a number of rather clear mistakes in the investigation".

Lundius told Aftonbladet that she had delivered her criticism directly to Lambertz, who has also been criticized recently for weighing in on the debate about the handling of the case of Thomas Quick, who has been cleared of five of the eight killings to which he was previously convicted.

In an email to the TT news agency, Lambertz said his involvement was "in relation to the Palme investigation, not in the investigation".

"It's abundantly clear that one can do that as a judge. One can also, in my opinion, without doing something inappropriate as a judge, have a meeting with, for example, the Prosecutor General in order to say (which I intended to do) that, in my opinion, the Palme investigation should be stepped up and, among other things, that it should follow up on the criticism it received from the so-called Review Commission (Granskningskommissionen) in 1999," he wrote.

Lambertz clarified, however, that a judge should not get involved in an investigation by, for example, conducting surveillance, offering tips, or trying to "convince investigators to work in a certain way".

"I think Marianne Lundius may have imagined that I was getting involved in the Palme investigation in the ways mentioned above. But that's not the case at all," wrote Lambertz.

In order to "not unnecessarily cause trouble here in the Supreme Court", Lambertz said he was calling off his planned meeting with the Prosecutor General.

TT/The Local/dl
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