18-year-old Turku suspect may have been radicalised
Court documents yesterday identified the suspect in last week’s stabbing spree in a Finnish city as 18-year-old Abderrahman Mechkah, who the country’s intelligence agency said may have been radicalized. The stabbing is being probed as the country’s first-ever terror attack. Police have previously described the suspect as an asylum seeker from Morocco. He targeted women in the attack at a market square in the southwestern port of Turku on Friday. Two people were killed dead and eight were injured. The motive for the attack is unclear. But the Finnish intelligence agency SUPO said Turku police had received a tip early this year that Mechkah “appeared... to have been radicalized and showed interest in extremist ideologies.” The tip, which had been forwarded to the SUPO, “contained no information about any threat of an attack.” Mechkah, whom police shot in the thigh while arresting him minutes after the rampage, is to appear before the Turku court on Tuesday via video link from hospital, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said.
Police will ask the court to remand him in custody on suspicion of two murders and eight attempted murders “with terrorist intent”. Investigators said Sunday that they had interrogated the suspect for the first time, but disclosed no information about the outcome. Police will also request the detention of four other Moroccan citizens who were arrested in an overnight raid on a Turku apartment building and refugee housing centre just hours after the attack. “They are suspected of participation in the murders and attempted murders committed with a terrorist intent. They deny any involvement in the offences,” the NBI said.