Swedish cops: Terror truck driver known to authorities
The 39-year-old Uzbekistan native who police say rammed a stolen beer truck into crowds of shoppers in Stockholm was known to authorities but only considered a “marginal character.”
As details emerge about what may have inspired the deadly attack that left four people dead and more than a dozen injured, investigators are scouring the suspect’s mobile phone and social media accounts. The man, whose name was not released last night, was arrested hours after the rampage.
And though Swedish authorities say they’re confident they’ve caught the man who was behind the wheel of the stolen beer delivery truck, they stressed yesterday that they “cannot rule out that more people are involved.” No group has claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, which mirrored recent truck attacks in London, Berlin and Nice, France.
Also yesterday, national police Chief Dan Eliasson said investigators are looking into a device found in the driver’s compartment that “could be a bomb” or an incendiary device.
“We have found a device in the vehicle that does not belong there,” he said. “We don’t know if it is a bomb or some kind of flammable substance.”
Friday’s brutal attack threw the Scandinavian country’s opendoor immigration policy into the spotlight.
Sweden, a country of 10 million, took in a record 163,000 refugees in 2015. And though it’s unclear whether the suspect was a Swedish citizen or how long he’d been in the country, the attack had some city residents reevaluating the country’s stance on immigration.
Joachim Kemiri, who was born in Sweden to a Tunisian father and a Swedish mother, says migrants and refugees had been arriving in too large numbers.
“Too many of them have been coming in too fast,” the 29-yearold railway worker said. “It’s too much.”
The attack had other nearby nations on high alert, including Norway, where a large section of the capital city of Oslo was cordoned off last night after authorities found what they described as a “bomb-like” device near a busy subway station. The official police Twitter account said one man had been arrested and police Chief Vidar Pedersen said police were working to disarm the device, which was found on the street outside the Groenland station.