On the morning of September 11th 2003, Sweden's minister of foreign affairs, Anna Lindh, died from stabbing wounds afflicted to her on the day before.

Today, Anna Lindh's murderer, Mijailo Mijailovic, was sentenced to forensic psychiatric care by the Swedish court of appeal. Since the sentence differs from the Stockholm city court's, it is expected that the case will go to the supreme court.

Ironically, the very reason that Anna Lindh was killed by this supposedly crazy person to begin with is, according to the defence, because of shortcomings in the Swedish system of psychiatric care.

Mijailo's lawyer, being a lawyer, was content with the court's decision to place him in the economically challenged psychiatric care which he himself had argued was directly responsible for Mijailo's actions.

I wrote "supposedly crazy" because while I'm sure Mijailo Mijailovic is far from being mild mannered and mentally stable, I'm not convinced he is so mentally ill that he cannot be held accountable for his own actions.

Part of me feels dissatisfied about Mijailo "merely" being sentenced to psychiatric care, as opposed to spending the rest of his life in prison (there is no death penalty in the EU). Meanwhile, being an atheist, I don't believe in punishment of the traditional biblical kind as an effective means of rehabilitating criminals.

I don't think vengeance should have anything to do with a court's sentence, but at the same time I apparently feel unsatisfied when a criminal is let off "too easy". Where to draw the line? I don't know.

Permanent link