The girl was on her way to a leisure club on Wednesday when she was attacked in a green space in the middle of the city. A woman who was passing by intervened, and a man fled the scene.

On Friday morning police said that a man has been arrested suspected on probable cause (the higher degree of suspicion under Swedish law) of attempted rape.

“We can't say so much right now. What is happening is that we're working further on the investigation in order to either strengthen the evidence against the person or dismiss it from the investigation,” Örebro Police spkesperson Anders Sjöberg told news agency TT.

“Witnesses, above all, and observations made” led police to the suspect, he added.

Örebro Police previously revealed that they are investigating whether the incident may be linked to a similar crime from 2012, when a nine-year-old girl was subjected to a sexual assault in the Almby area of the same city.

But Sjöberg emphasized that there is currently nothing concrete to suggest that the man who was arrested on Friday was involved in the incident from 2012.

“What we have noted is that it was also a young girl who was assaulted in a similar way then.”