The 25-year-old man accused of murdering Sweden's foreign minister Anna Lindh today admitted stabbing her but said he hoped all along that she would survive the attack.
Mijailo Mijailovic, a Swede born to Serbian parents, told a court on the first day of his murder trial that he fled the NK department store in Stockholm immediately after attacking Lindh with a knife on September 10.
Later that night, as Lindh underwent surgery for severe stab wounds to her abdomen, he watched television news reports at a friend's house outside Stockholm. 'I was worried about what had happened. I was hoping that she would survive,' he told the court.
When he found out the next day that Lindh had died of her injuries, he said he 'felt very sad, she was a good person.'
Mijailovic, who has a history of mental instability, told the panel of judges he was 'feeling really bad and hadn't slept for days' prior to the attack on Lindh, and that he was taking ten different kinds of medication, including anti-depressants and sleeping pills, at the time.
He has pleaded not guilty to the murder on the grounds that he did not intend to kill Lindh.
