“It’s a very unique decision,” Justice Minister Beatrice Ask said upon news that the Swedish prosecutor’s office had decided to drop the eighth and final murder charge against Thomas Quick, who nowadays goes under the name Sture Bergwall.

“It is rare in Swedish judiciary history and it is serious that someone has been convicted of so many serious crimes and then been cleared,” she told the TT news agency.

Her ministry has set about trying to find how the two-decade long drama came about. Her staff are looking at drafting directives on to structure a proper review of the case.

“The review will investigate partly how the judiciary acted, and partly whether there are structural weaknesses,” Ask said.

She reiterated the chief prosecutor’s view that it would probably be impossible to hold a single person accountable for the palaver.

“We don’t have reviews that aim to judge people. We have rules, we have statutes of limitations. We have to keep to basic principles about how to find out whether people have acted correctly or incorrectly,” Ask said.

TT/The Local/at

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