Sweden jails Uzbek truck raider for life
Akilov had mowed down 5 in Stockholm
A Swedish court on Thursday sentenced a radicalised and rejected Uzbek asylum seeker to life in prison for terrorism after he mowed down pedestrians with a stolen truck in central Stockholm last year, killing five people.
The assault mirrored other truck attacks in 2016 that left scores dead in France, Germany and the UK. It occurred as Sweden grappled with the aftermath of having taken in more migrants per capita than any other country in Europe.
Arrested hours after the April 7, 2017 attack, Rakhmat Akilov, 40, who swore allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS) group on the eve of the assault, said that ISIS members had given him the green light on encrypted chat sites to carry out a suicide attack in the Swedish capital.
However, the jihadist organisation never claimed responsibility for the assault. ç
The Stockholm district court convicted Akilov of “terrorist crimes” for five murders and 119 attempted murders in one of Stockholm’s busiest shopping streets.
Three Swedes — including a girl who would have turned 12 on Thursday — were killed along with a 41- year- old British man and a 31- year- old Belgian woman. Another 10 people were injured.
Akilov, who confessed almost immediately to the attack, expressed no remorse during his nearly three- month trial.
His gaze often remained empty, even when photographs and footage of the bloody attack were projected onto a large screen in the courtroom.
“The effects ( the attack) had on Sweden were rather severe and his intention was to scare the Swedish public,” senior judge Ragnar Palmkvist told AFP.
“He acted with the direct intention to kill as many people as possible,” the court said in its verdict, adding that Akilov would be expelled after serving the life term, which averages 16 years in Sweden.
After swerving wildly to
hit as many people as possible, Akilov’s rampage ended when the truck smashed into the facade of a large department store.
Another judge in the trial, Carl Rosenmuller, said Akilov saw the victims as “pins in a game”, not human beings.
An explosive device — made up of five gas canisters and nails — did not explode as planned and caused fire damage only to the truck.
Akilov fled the scene, running into a nearby metro station, and was arrested several hours later after being identified by public transport video surveillance images and eyewitness reports.
Investigators found text messages on Akilov’s cell phone with contacts identified only by pseudonyms, and whom Akilov said were high- ranking members of IS or the “Islamic caliphate” declared in parts of Iraq and Syria.
The Stockholm district court convicted Akilov of “terrorist crimes” for five murders and 119 attempted murders in one of Stockholm’s busiest shopping streets