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STOCKHOLM SUICIDE BOMBING

TAIMOUR ABDULWAHAB

‘No evidence bomber belonged to al-Qaeda’

An unexploded bomb was left in the car of Stockholm suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab, investigators said on Wednesday, adding that there was nothing to indicate he was a member of the al-Qaeda terror network.

'No evidence bomber belonged to al-Qaeda'

The 28-year-old Abdulwahab blew himself up on December 11th, 2010 in central Stockholm. He was killed after one of the many charges he was carrying exploded after he made several unsuccessful attempts to detonate the explosives.

In a Wednesday press conference, investigators attempted to provide details about the hours leading up to the attack.

“This is an attack that we think was meant to be of much greater scope than what it turned out to be,” prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnström told reporters, according to the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

According to investigators, Abdulwahab was alone from the time he left his home in Tranås in central Sweden until he ended up dead on a Stockholm street several hours later.

The car he drove to Stockholm was also set alight in conjunction with the attack.

In the vehicles charred remains, investigators found an unexploded bomb fashioned from a pressure cooker. A similar type of bomb was found on Abdulwahab’s body, but never exploded. A walkie-talkie was also recovered from the burned out car.

Swedish security service Säpo said that Abdulwahab likely meant to start a fire and then detonate a bomb with the walkie-talkie.

“Something also went wrong in this case,” Säpo deputy head Anders Thornberg told reporters, according to the TT news agency.

Based on the investigation’s findings thus far, there is nothing to indicate that Abdulwahab had any accomplices present at the site of the attack.

“Nothing points to anything else. We are still working on the question of whether or not he received financial or economic support,” said Säpo head Anders Danielsson.

Hilding Qvarnström emphasized that a lot of work remains in the probe and that much is dependent on cooperation with other countries.

Surveillance footage shows how Abdulwahab walked from his car along Drottninggatan, a busy pedestrian thoroughfare filled at the time with holiday shoppers.

He can be seen walking back toward the car, which was parked on the adjacent Bryggargatan, to check on the bomb which refused to explode.

“The bombs themselves weren’t all that complex,” said Hilding Qvarnström.

During the press conference, investigators showed films of test explosions of bombs similar to the one made by Abdulwahab, demonstrating how powerful it could have been if fully detonated.

“What we can say is that there were a lot of people on Drottninggatan at the time. We can only imagine what could have happened; how many could have been killed,” said Hilding Qvarnström.

Abdulwahab was carrying approximately four kilogrammes of explosives in a pressure cooker attached to his midsection.

He was also carrying a backpack which contained another pressure cooker and nine additional kilogrammes of explosives.

In the attack, only a portion of the explosives Abdulwahab carried on his stomach exploded.

According to investigators, Abdulwahab had the bomb fastened to his stomach when he left Tranås. Surveillance footage from a petrol station showed something protruding from underneath his clothes.

On the approach to Drottinggatan, Abdulwahab may have taken a wrong turn because faulty coordinates had been entered in his GPS, causing him to arrive later than planned.

Danielsson said that there is no solid evidence indicating that Abdulwahab was a member of al-Qaeda.

A Scottish probe into an alleged accomplice, Nasserdine Menni, indicates that some terror network may have been behind the attack.

According to Scottish investigators, Menni and Abdulwahab knew each other since 2003 and had been planning their actions for years.

Menni assumed false identities, misled immigration authorities and banks, and opened several accounts starting in 2005.

Up until 2010, he directed at least 60,000 kronor ($9,000) to Abdulwahab. Another person received around 10,000 from Menni.

In the summer of 2009, Abdulwahab traveled to Syria and Iraq for terrorist training.

He had originally come to Sweden in the early 1990s before moving to the UK in 2001 to study in Luton, which is where he met Menni.

Three weeks prior to the Stockholm suicide bombing, Abdulwahab returned to Sweden, bought a car and bomb-making supplies.

He placed a telephone call to Iraq and received a call from Iraq on the day of the attack, when he also tried to call Menni.

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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.

The Local/dl

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