The period between 1939 and 1945 was marked with extensive foreign intelligence activity in Sweden , resulting in the arrest of numerous spies and enemy agents . Some of the most notorious post-war spies are Fritiof Enbom , Hilding Andersson , Stig Wennerström and Stig Bergling . In all of these cases the spying was done on behalf of the Soviet Union and the spies were convicted to life in prison . In the early 1970s , Sweden was rocked by a number of terrorist acts perpetrated by Croatian separatists . Some of the most significant cases were the 1971 Yugoslavian embassy attack in Stockholm and the hijacking of Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 130 a year later . The inception of the first Terrorist Act in 1973 was an immediate policy upshot of this , which among other things gave the police the right to deport people affiliated with terrorist organisations without delay . These incidents also led to internal changes within the Department of Security , which received more resources . On 28 February 1986 , Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated by an unknown gunman . The Department was not widely criticized , partly because Palme himself had declined protection on the night of the murder . It nevertheless sparked the resignation of the National Police Commissioner Nils Erik Åhmansson and the head of the Department , Sune Sandström , following the revelation of the Ebbe Carlsson affair in 1988 . The Swedish Security Service was established on 1 October 1989 , on the recommendations put forward by a Government committee tasked with evaluating the Department of Security following the assassination of Palme . The new agency was — although still formally a part of the National Police Board — more independent , with its own Director-General and political oversight also increased . Furthermore , the Service took over the formal responsibility for all close protection tasks , which was previously shared with the National Police Board and the Stockholm County Police . On 10 September 2003 , Minister for Foreign Affairs Anna Lindh was assassinated by Mijailo Mijailović , who was arrested two weeks later . The Government reviewed its procedures in the wake of the Lindh killing , which led to the doubling of the number of close-protection officers . On 1 January 2015 , the police reorganised again into a unified agency , with the Swedish Security Service becoming a fully independent agency
Olof Palme was assassinated
Assassination of Olof Palme
Swedish Security Service