24.2.2011. For The Sunday Times

The Editor

Sir,

A couple of weeks ago, I had a telephone call from one of your staff reporters, whose name I unfortunately did not catch. He told me that he and his paper were preparing an article in connection with the 25 years anniversary of the Olof Palme assassination.

He asked if he could have my points of view, and I willingly agreed.

Your reporter proved to know a lot about this as yet unsolved murder in a Stockholm street. He knew about many more or less peripherical names; I remember especially his mentioning a man named Jerry Martinger, of whose part in this gruesome story most Swedish reporters know very little, if anything.

I received the impression that his article was already almost complete and that he only needed a few finishing touches to go to press. He said he would call me back in a few days´ time, and we hung up. I have not heard from him since.

Since then I have written three letters to this reporter, whom I have called ”the Palme reporter of the Foreign Desk”; your staff can hardly have had any difficulty placing him.

But I have had no response whatsoever. Neither from the man I had spoken to, nor from any representative of your Foreign Desk.

I am a veteran reporter – since 1948 – and I am well aware of the fact that interviews can disappear, for various reasons. But, in this case, and with the reporter´s promise to keep me posted, I am somewhat amazed: What happened to the article in connection? What happened to the reporter, so well versed in Swedish history?

I have studied a little of the British press history from the inside, viz. The Daily Telgraph in Fleet Street, the summer of 1957, when I was the Dagens Nyheter English correspondent for a couple of months. Very agreeable months, with many cups of tea in the luncheon room and discussions with the Telegraph people.

My memory is to-day slightly tinged by my severed contact with the Sunday Times.

So I ask you, please Sir, to send me a few lines relating what really happened. Or call me!

As for the factual story, the Swedish State Head Criminologist, Leif GW Persson, told the amazed Swedish people in a long TV interview the day before yesterday that Olof Palme can have been shot by a policeman, exactly what I foresaw in my first Palme book from 1988; ”Polisspåret – The Police Trail”. This was also, obviously, the trail that your reporter was following.

This officially unsolved murder is Sweden´s open bleeding wound.

Hoping to hear from you,

Yours sincerely

Sven Anér, 85 A, Karlsrogatan, S-752 39 Uppsala, Sweden. (461)8 15 12 79.