16 April 2017

Swedish Terror Suspect Sympathizes With ISIS

Terrorist in Sweden
The Uzbek man who was suspected of ramming a truck into a crowd in Stockholm, killing four people, had expressed sympathy for Islamic State and was wanted for failing to comply with a deportation order, Swedish police said last 9 April.

Two sources who had worked with the suspect, Rakhmat Akilov, independently identified him to Reuters from images distributed by police as the manhunt got underway last 7 April.

Two police spokespersons declined to confirm his identity as did the suspect's court-appointed lawyer.

Thousands gathered in the spring sunshine near the site of Friday's attack to show support for those killed or injured when a hijacked beer delivery truck hurtled down a busy shopping street before crashing into a store and catching fire. The Uzbek man was arrested several hours later.

"The suspect had expressed sympathy for extremist organizations, among them IS," Jonas Hysing, chief of national police operations, told a news conference, using an acronym for the ultra-hardline militant group.

Two of those killed were Swedes, one was a British citizen and the other from Belgium, Hysing said of the attack, which echoes the earlier use of vehicles as deadly weapons in Nice, Berlin and London. Those attacks were claimed by Islamic State, but there has been no such claim yet for the Stockholm assault.

The suspect, aged 39 and from the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, applied for permanent residence in Sweden in 2014. However, his bid was rejected and he was wanted for disregarding a deportation order, Hysing said.

Security Police spokesman Simon Bynert said the suspect had been involved in an asylum process in Sweden, but that the security police had not been part of it.

Police had been looking for him since Sweden's Migration Agency in December gave him four weeks to leave, but security services had not viewed him as a militant threat.

Sweden's prosecution authority said a second person had been arrested on suspicion of having committed a terrorist offence through murder, but police said they were more convinced than ever that the Uzbek man was the driver of the truck.

Another five people were being held for questioning after raids and police said they had conducted about 500 interviews.