Little-known group claims responsibility for killing of Swedish journalist in Kabul

KABUL (Reuters) – A little-known Islamist group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for killing a Swedish journalist in the Afghan capital, saying he was a spy for British intelligence. Nils Horner, 51, who worked for Swedish Radio and had dual British-Swedish nationality, was shot dead outside a restaurant one Kabul’s most heavily guarded districts on Tuesday, underscoring growing insecurity threatening next month’s elections. “Nils Horner was killed in this attack. He was not a journalist. He was a spy for [MI6],” the group, Fedai Mahaz Tahrik Islami Afghanistan, said on its website. Fedai Mahaz, or “Suicide Front,” describes itself as a splinter group of the Afghan Taliban-led insurgency, but the Taliban denied any connection. “This group is not part of the Islamic Emirates. They only try to defame us,” a Taliban spokesman said. Kabul’s police chief said he heard Fedai Mahaz had claimed responsibility, but did not have information about it because it was not active in the Afghan capital. Fedai Mahaz’s website contains material outlining the group’s opposition to the opening of an office for the Taliban in Qatar for peace talks in June last year. More recently, the same group claimed responsibility for assassinating the provincial governor of Logar province in October. A Western embassy official said the group’s suggestion that Horner was a secret agent was “fanciful” but the episode could point to a sinister trend in which terrorists were now seeking to pick off random Westerners from the street. “It kind of all points to being opportunistic, but we can’t be sure,” the diplomat said. “This whole claim on the website about him being in the Secret Intelligence Service [MI6] and not a journalist is just complete nonsense.”