Wednesday next week will be historic. At 09.30, Chief Prosecutor Krister Petersson will present his solution to the Palm murder - 34 years after the shooting on Sveavägen.
It may then be that the person who the prosecutor claims murdered Olof Palme is deceased, something that the prosecutor himself speculated.
- If a person is identified as likely to be guilty of the Palm murder then there is a slander in the technical sense. And you do not necessarily need to name a person, it is enough to provide enough information to let the surroundings of the deceased person know who it is, explains Mårten Schultz, professor of civil law at Stockholm University.
"The longer time has elapsed, the more you can say"But according to Schultz, prosecutors and the media who choose to publish the name of a deceased perpetrator run no greater risk of pleading guilty to the deceased, even though the deceased and their relatives have special protection of the law.
- The question is whether it should still be considered permissible. The longer time that has elapsed, the more you can say about someone. It can never be a problem to point out those who murdered Caesar, for example, where there is a historical interest that weighs on.
"Completely unlikely"The Palm murder is also unique.
- It is a national trauma and one of the most important events in modern Swedish history. Freedom of expression must be very far-reaching in these cases, even in the case of statements coming from, for example, the judiciary, in this case the Public Prosecutor's Office.
When it comes to the media, it is the Chancellor of Justice who will prosecute for slander. However, this is extremely unusual, according to Mårten Schultz. What remains then is if relatives choose to bring the case. Then the case is tried by a jury. Here, too, protection of freedom of expression is strong.
- I dare say that it is quite unlikely that the Chancellor would prosecute any media that publishes this or that an ordinary prosecutor would go to the person who discusses this issue afterwards on Facebook or Twitter and mention the dead person's name.