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STOCKHOLM SUICIDE BOMBING

TAIMOUR ABDULWAHAB

UK police charge man over Stockholm bomb

Police in Scotland have confirmed that they have charged a 30-year-old man with terror crimes in connection with the suicide bombing in Stockholm in December.

UK police charge man over Stockholm bomb

“Strathclyde Police can confirm that a 30-year-old man has been charged with offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. This follows an operation in the Whiteinch area of Glasgow on Tuesday, March 8th, 2011,” a spokesperson said.

The man, reported in several Scottish media sources to be a Kuwaiti national, was due to appear in court in Glasgow later Monday, a police source said.

British authorities had been investigating any links to the Swedish attack — the country’s first suicide bombing — following the revelation that the bomber, Taimour Abdulwahab, had lived and studied near London.

Abdulwahab, a 29-year-old whose family fled from Iraq to Sweden in 1991, blew up himself and his car in a deserted side-street off of Stockholm’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfare on December 11th, injuring two people and narrowly missed wreaking carnage among Christmas shoppers.

Before the attack, he had lived in Luton, north of London. He had graduated with a degree in sports therapy from the city’s university seven years earlier.

An Islamist website, Shumukh al-Islam, posted a purported will by Abdulwahab which said he was fulfilling a threat by Al-Qaeda in Iraq to attack Sweden.

Shortly before the explosions, Säpo and the TT news agency received an email with audio files in which Abdulwahab is heard telling “all hidden mujahedeen in Europe, and especially in Sweden, it is now the time to fight back.”

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CSN

Suicide bomber lived off Swedish student aid

Stockholm suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab received more money from the Swedish state than from his terrorist financiers, including a 54,000-kronor ($8,550) payout made after he bled to death in his failed terror bid.

Suicide bomber lived off Swedish student aid

All told, Abdulwahab received nearly 750,000 kronor ($119,000) from the Swedish National Board for Student Aid (Centrala studiestödsnämnden, CSN), the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper reports.

The figure is more than ten times the estimated $8,000 sum cited in a Scottish court’s conviction last year of Nesserdine Menni, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for funding Abdulwahab’s December 2010 attack in Stockholm.

The revelations come from Swedish author Mats Ekman, the author of a book on Iraqi intelligence activities in Sweden during Saddam Hussein’s rule of Iraq.

Ekman examined all of Abdulwahab’s student aid applications and payments, and discovered the Stockholm suicide bomber frequently sent certificates to CSN verifying his coursework.

“I would like to thank CSN and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” Abdulwahab wrote at the end of one of his letters to the agency.

According to Ekman’s research, Abdulwahab first applied for student aid in the late 1990s and used the money he received from the Swedish agency to fund his studies in Luton, England, the place where the Iraqi-born Swede is believed to have became inspired by militant Islamism.

It remains unclear what happened to the 54,000 kronor sent by CSN to Abdulwahab two days after he died in the December 2012 suicide bomb attack in a busy shopping district in central Stockholm.

After Abdulwahab’s death, CSN subsequently wrote off 670,000 kronor of his student loan debt.

Prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnström continues to investigate the suicide bomb attack but refused to speculate on how much money Abdulwahab may have spent or whether Swedish student aid money may have been used to buy materials used in the bomb attack.

Hilding Qvarnström is expected to present her investigation some time in the spring.

The revelations may also lead to changes in how CSN deals with outstanding debts when someone dies with outstanding dues.

“This has been a real eye-opener for us,” CSN spokesman Klas Elfving told DN, adding that the payment was authorized on December 9th, prior to Abdulwahab’s death.

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