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Medical school expels murderer

Sweden's Karolinska Institute has expelled a convicted murderer from its medical course on a technical issue, but in doing so has not resolved the question of whether killers can later study to become doctors, the institute's president said.

Karl Svensson, aged 31, was admitted last year to the prestigious institute, which chooses the winners of the Nobel prize in medicine. But after anonymous tip-offs, the institute learnt that in 2000, Mr Svensson, then using the name Hampus Hellekant, had been convicted of shooting a trade union worker. Mr Svensson maintained that he did not commit the killing and was released last year after serving six and a half years of an 11 year sentence.

A number of doctors, writing in a journal published by the Swedish Medical Association, had argued that Mr Svensson should not be allowed to become a doctor, and the Swedish licensing body had said it would not grant him a medical licence on account of the conviction.

The Karolinska Institute eventually expelled Svensson after it could not check the high school diploma he had submitted. Because the expulsion did not resolve how to handle any future such cases, Sweden must still determine whether medical schools can admit a convicted murderer, said Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson, the institute's president. News agencies reported that they …