Stockholm: The suicide bomber who blew
himself up on a busy pedestrian street in Sweden was not on a
list of 200 radical Islamists that the country`s security
service had compiled, officials said on Wednesday.
In a report detailing the extent of extremist Islamist
networks in Sweden, ordered months before Saturday`s
near-massacre in downtown Stockholm, the SAPO agency
downplayed the risk of terror attacks in the Nordic country.
Activity among radicalized Muslims in Sweden is
primarily directed toward supporting militants in other
countries, including Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it
said.
"After Saturday`s attempted attack, we can see that it
also presents a serious threat against people in Sweden,"
Malena Rembe, chief analyst at SAPO`s counterterrorism unit,
added at a news conference.
Taimour Abdulwahab, an Iraqi-born Swede, killed
himself and injured two people Saturday when a bomb he was
wearing exploded on a pedestrian street in downtown Stockholm.
An audio file sent shortly before the blast from his
cell phone referred to Sweden`s military presence in
Afghanistan and an image by a Swedish artist that depicted the
Prophet Muhammad as a dog, enraging many Muslims.
Abdulwahab spent much of the past decade in Britain
and appears to have been radicalized there. Rembe said he was
not among the roughly 200 people that SAPO said they had
identified as active in radical Islamist networks in Sweden.
PTI
