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Swedish murder suspect arrested in London

One of two Swedish brothers under suspicion of the murder of a 22-year-old man in central Stockholm last year has been arrested in London.

Published: 2 February 2012 07:46 CET

“He has been apprehended but we don’t know much more than that. I haven’t been in contact with him yet, but I would expect him to have been appointed British representation,” the suspect’s Swedish lawyer Henrik Olsson Lilja, told Dagens Nyheter (DN) on Wednesday.

He said he would be prepared to continue to defend his client and that a trip to the UK might be on the cards in the near future.

The two brothers are wanted for the murder of a 22-year-old man who was stabbed to death in the Stockholm district of Gamla Stan on September 10th.

Many people had been present at the time of the incident but police ran into problems after witness interviews failed to up anything substantial.

However, after police appealed to the general public for information on the TV3 show “Efterlyst” (‘Wanted’), they were furnished with some leads to follow up.

On January 19th, a warrant was issued for the arrest of the two Stockholm brothers, who were believed to have left Sweden.

On Tuesday, police in Britain apprehended one of them in a London suburb, the result of a close cooperation between Swedish and British police.

Sweden will request the man be extradited, according to DN, but police are unable to say how long such a process might take.

The man’s 24-year-old brother is still sought by police on suspicion of murder.

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French prosecutor says Paris suburb stabbing treated as suspected terror attack

A police forensic team at the scene of the attack in Villejuif. Photo: Christophe Archambault/AFP

The man killed one person walking with his wife before being shot dead by police.

Police said the man, identified as 22-year-old Nathan C., attacked several people around lunchtime Friday in the suburb of Villejuif and they initially treated the incident as a criminal not terrorist incident.

But in a statement, the French national anti-terrorist investigation body (PNAT) said that while Nathan C. was known to have had psychiatric problems, worrying evidence had also emerged about his conversion to Islam and radicalisation.

“Investigations over the past few hours have allowed us to establish that he was certainly radicalised (and to show)… organised preparation for his move towards the act,” the statement said.

Additionally, they “showed a murderous path, thought out and chosen, of such a nature as to gravely disturb public order by intimidation or terror,” it said.

READ ALSO: Knife attacker kills man in Paris park before being shot dead by police

Earlier a local magistrate told a press conference that Nathan C. had shouted the Muslim invocation “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) during the attack.

Nathan C. converted to Islam in mid-2017 and is believed to have suffered serious psychiatric problems since he was child, with several spells in hospital. In June he stopped receiving the treatment he was being given.

Police found literature characterised as Salafist in a bag after the attack, Philippe Bugeaud of the Paris investigative police told the press conference.

There was also a letter “with phrases fairly typical of a Muslim man who self-flagellates and who knows that he may be about to take the plunge,” Bugeaud added.

Nathan C.'s apartment in Paris also bore “every sign that it was going to be no longer lived in,” magistrate Laure Beccuau said.

Nathan C. apparently spared a first person who said he was a Muslim and had recited a prayer in Arabic, she said.

He then attacked the couple, killing the husband and seriously injuring the wife before wounding a woman jogger in the back. Beccuau said the two women had now left hospital.

France remains on high alert after being hit by a string of attacks by jihadist extremists since 2015, with more than 250 people killed in total.

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