Sweden closed canal locks, banned private flights and put hundreds of police in the streets of the capital yesterday to protect world leaders at a memorial service for slain Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.
With police snipers on rooftops and helicopters hovering above, authorities said the security arrangements outside Stockholm City Hall were the most extensive in the city since the 1986 funeral for assassinated prime minister Olof Palme.
European Commission President Romano Prodi, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and foreign ministers from most European countries and several other nations were among the approximately 1,200 guests at the 90-minute private memorial held by Lindh's Social Democratic Party.
Lindh, 46 and a mother of two, was attacked by a knife-wielding man on Sept. 10 while she was out shopping in downtown Stockholm without bodyguards. She died of her wounds the next day.
As police continued their hunt for Lindh's killer, prosecutor Ola Sjoestrand said investigators will ask the Stockholm District Court to keep a 35-year-old suspect, who was arrested on Tuesday, in custody.
If a judge approves the request at a hearing later today "then we will get one more week to investigate," Sjoestrand said.
Police received the results from DNA testing that could link the 35-year-old drifter in custody to Lindh's slaying, but wouldn't say if it matched genetic material found near the crime scene.
Gunnar Falk, the suspect's lawyer, did not immediately return a phone message left at his office by reporters.
Inside the large red-bricked hall, where the annual Nobel Prize banquet is held, guests were seated before a stage where a photograph of Lindh, a rose attached to the easel holding it, was surrounded by blue, red and white flowers.
The service was carried live on Swedish state television and in neighboring Finland, Norway and Denmark.
"We shall carry the memory of Anna with us as an invisible treasure from which to gather strength,'' Prime Minister Goeran Persson said.
Lindh was touted as a future prime minister of the Scandinavian country of 9 million.
Lindh maintained a wide circle of contacts in the diplomatic community and was often a high-profile presence at international conferences and meetings.
Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, who lived and studied in Sweden, called Lindh a diplomat without equal.
"We politicians don't always take time to put words to our emotions, but you were an exception," he said in Swedish. "You dared to be sincere."
EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten called Lindh "a woman who loved the world and who was loved by the world."
A separate private memorial service was held at the store where Lindh was stabbed. A store spokeswoman said the giant mound of flowers and handwritten cards left in front of the store by grieving Swedes would be moved to City Hall this morning.
On yesterday morning, grieving Swedes were still signing condolence books, leaving messages of remorse to Lindh's husband and two boys.
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