STOCKHOLM, Sept 19: Swedish politicians and European leaders bade an emotional farewell on Friday to murdered Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, grieving at the loss of a woman they said had brought joy and honour to politics.

Sweden’s king and queen, colleagues in the ruling Social Democrat party and European leaders paid homage at a memorial service in the imposing red brick City Hall where Nobel prizes are celebrated. The funeral will be private.

The speeches went well beyond the demands of etiquette. Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, fluent in Swedish from his time in exile here, asked “Why, why, why again?” was the 46-year-old mother of two stabbed to death last week.

Her murder at the hands of a lone knife-wielding man has rekindled bitter memories of the unsolved assassination in 1986 of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Security around the ceremony was the tightest Stockholm has seen since Palme’s funeral.

A Stockholm court ordered the 35-year-old man who is the main suspect to be kept in custody for a week while the police investigation continues, at a remand hearing in a high-security underground court into which he was led with his head covered.

The suspect’s court-appointed defence lawyer, Gunnar Falk, told Reuters afterwards that police were having difficulty.—Reuters