Stockholm suspect was failed asylum-seeker; second man arrested
The Stockholm truck attack suspect was a rejected asylumseeker from Uzbekistan who eluded authorities’ attempts to deport him by giving police a wrong address, Swedish police said Sunday while announcing the arrest of a second suspect.
Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police told a news conference that the 39-year-old suspect’s request for a residence permit was rejected in June 2016, but police could not find him to send him back to his native country because he was not at the address he had given. Swedish police started formally seeking him on Feb. 24.
“We know he has been sympathetic to extremist organizations,” said Jonas Hysing of Sweden’s national police. He declined to name the suspect, who was arrested within hours of Friday’s attack on shoppers in Stockholm.
A second person has been arrested in connection with the attack and is suspected of terrorist offences, including murder, spokeswoman Karin Rosander told The Associated Press. She did not give further details about the new suspect. Four others were being held by police.
Evensson said authorities have questioned more than 500 people in the investigation so far.
The four victims killed in Friday’s attack, in which a hijacked beer truck was driven into an upscale department store, included a British man, a Belgian woman and two Swedes, authorities in those countries said. Their identities were not released by Swedish officials.
The British government named the Briton as Chris Bevington, an executive at Swedish music-streaming service Spotify. Britain’s Press Association news agency said he was 41. In Brussels, the Belga news agency said the Belgian woman had been reported missing before she was identified by her identity papers and later by DNA testing.
As of Sunday, 10 of the 15 people wounded in the truck attack in the Swedish capital remained hospitalized, including one child. Stockholm county spokesman Patrik Soderberg said four of the 10 were considered “seriously” injured and the remaining six, including the child, were slightly injured.