Stockholm, Jan. 12 (Reuters): The man who has confessed to killing Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh in September stabbed her several times with a knife, saying Jesus told him to do so, police said today.

Mijailo Mijailovic confessed last week to the attack — having denied until then any involvement since his arrest on September 24 — but told prosecutors and his defence lawyer the deed had been unplanned and lacked political motive.

Prosecutors charged the 25-year-old Mijailovic with murder today, saying solid forensic evidence tied him to the murder weapon, a knife with a 10-cm blade, and the victim.

“He says he did not have a political motive and that it happened all of a sudden. That is his version,” Chief prosecutor Agneta Blidberg said.

Mijailovic told police he knew who he was stabbing, but that he had had nothing personal against Lindh, a 46-year-old mother of two tipped as Sweden’s next Prime Minister.

“It was a coincidence that I happened to see her,” he said according to the police hearing protocol. “It could also have been someone else.”

Mijailovic, a high-school drop-out who had sought psychiatric help before the attack, said inner voices had spoken to him in the language of his parents from former Yugoslavia, where he spent part of his childhood and early youth.

“They told me to stab.” Asked to whom the voices belonged, Mijailovic said: “I think it is Jesus. That he has chosen me.”

Mijailovic goes on trial on Wednesday and faces between 10 years and life in prison if convicted for murder.