Lawyer: Anna Lindh suspect confesses

Stockholm - The man suspected by police of fatally stabbing Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh while she shopped with a friend last year has confessed to the crime, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Peter Althin said Mijailo Mijailovic, 25, confessed to the crime Tuesday while he was being interrogated police and investigators.

Swedish prosecutors were not immediately available for comment.

The confession clears the way for police to file charges of murder against Mijailovic as early as January 12, police said.

Mijailovic has been in custody since September 24, two weeks after the 46-year-old Lindh was killed in a Stockholm department store while she was shopping with a friend.

If convicted, he could be sentenced to as long as life in prison. Sweden doesn't have capital punishment.

Chief prosecutor Agneta Blidberg said that DNA traces found on the knife used to stab Lindh and on Mijailovic's clothes matches his own, adding that the evidence against the suspect is good.

The trial against Mijailovic is expected to dominate Scandinavian media, particularly in Sweden, which is still haunted by the unsolved killing of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.

State-run Swedish television plans to air live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the trial, but without video, on one of its digital television networks. Live video coverage of trials is illegal in Sweden. -- CNN News

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