British father among Sweden terror victims
British man killed by lorry driven into crowd was director at Spotify and leaves a wife and son
A British father was among the four people killed in the Stockholm lorry attack, police said yesterday, as it emerged that the prime suspect had been rejected for asylum in Sweden last year. Chris Bevington, 41, pictured below, was a director at the music streaming service Spotify, which has an office in the Swedish capital.
A BRITISH father was among the four people killed in the Stockholm lorry attack, police said yesterday, as it emerged that the prime suspect had been rejected for asylum in Sweden last year.
Chris Bevington, 41, was a director of global partnerships at the music streaming service Spotify, which has an office in central Stockholm.
“We are all devastated by the untimely and tragic death of our talented, compassionate and caring son Chris,” John Bevington, his father, said in a statement yesterday.
“[He was] a wonderful husband, son, father, brother and close friend to many. The family requests absolute privacy at this incredibly difficult time to mourn his passing in peace.”
It came as Swedish police disclosed that the suspect, who has been named by Swedish media as 39-year-old Rakhmat Akilov, was a failed asylum seeker.
“He applied for a permanent residency permit in 2014,” said police chief Jonas Hysing. “The Migration Agency rejected it in June 2016 and also decided that he was to be expelled.”
He added that Akilov “showed interest in extremist organisations like Isil [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant].”
Akilov told officers he carried out the attack on the orders of Isil, the newspaper Aftonbladet reported, citing police sources. “The bombings in Syria must stop,” he is alleged to have said. Akilov is also said to have told interrogators a suspected bomb on the lorry, which failed to go off, contained “gas canisters, chemicals and nails”.
The force has admitted that Akilov, from Uzbekistan, was known to the authorities some years ago, but as a “more marginal character”. He remains in police custody and is expected to appear before a court in Stockholm tomorrow.
Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Löfven has called for tougher measures on ejecting failed asylum seekers.
He said he was “enormously frus- trated” that Sweden’s liberal immigration policies had failed to eject Akilov before the attack. “Sweden will never go back to the mass immigration we had in 2015,” he said.
A former co-worker at a construction company in Sweden where Akilov worked for a few months last year said he was a father who sent money to a wife and several children in Uzbekistan.
His Facebook page shows he was following a group called “Friends of Libya and Syria”, dedicated to exposing “terrorism of the imperialistic financial capitals” of the United States, Britain and Arab “dictatorships”. It also showed he liked Playboy magazine and Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova.
Mr Bevington was born in South Africa, where he spent a portion of his childhood, before moving to Leatherhead in Surrey with his family.
He has an older brother, Derren, 43, and a youngster sister, Natasha, 37. His father is a retired company executive and was chief executive of the Pension Protection Fund. After school, Mr Bev- ington went on to study at Loughborough University and worked for Barclays before landing a job with Warner Music in Stockholm, where he met his future wife Annika, who is a copyright lawyer with the firm.
He and Annika married in June 2012 and have a son. Instead of accepting wedding presents the couple donated money to Oxfam. He wrote on his JustGiving page: “Oxfam has always been my charity of choice as it strikes a chord with me for the work they do, with a particular focus on improving all aspects of life in Africa.”
Spotify’s office in the Swedish capital is just a short walk from Queen’s Street, the shopping district where the lorry ploughed through a crowd of people on Friday afternoon.
Daniel Ek, the chief executive and founder of Spotify, said he was “devastated” by the news.
Yesterday afternoon, thousands took to the streets of Stockholm to attend a memorial concert at Sergels Torg plaza and leave tributes.