The Supreme Court in Sweden has turned down a motion to retry the man who was convicted and later acquitted--due to lack of evidence--of the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme.

The Court said new evidence was not sufficient to reopen the case against fifty-year-old Christer Pettersson.

The prosecutor's office had argued that evidence from several new witnesses showed that Mr Pettersson had been in the central Stockholm, where Mr Palme was shot by an unidentified assailant in 1986.

Despite thousands of leads over the years, the murder weapon has never been found and the motive has never been established.

The prosecutor's office say investigations into the murder will continue.