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Sweden: Intelligence investigations?

01 November 1997

The former National Police Chief from 1965 to 1977, Carl Persson, has claimed that it was the former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme who, together with the Justice Minister at the time, Herman Kling, personally approved that the security police, in spite of the new law forbidding them to work as a political police, should continue to register communists and leftists. The law was only intended to satisfy public opinion; there was one signal to the public, another order to the security police.

Persson claims that he will now tell the true story, since he is tired of hearing that the Security Police were responsible. They only followed orders, he says.

The Social Democratic government is to give special funding to a research project on IB, the former Swedish intelligence service. There will be no special obligation for the people involved to tell the truth, nor special powers given to the researchers to investigate and reveal information which is secret. In other words, there will be no investigation like the Norwegian Lund-report.

Four parties in parliament (the liberals, the Christian Democrats, the Left party and the Green Party), representing about 40-45% of the MPs have, however, decided to set and fund a special citizens committee, with the purpose of getting to the bottom of the history of the Swedish surveillance-society. It is however still an open question as to how this will materialise.