“What we know is that a Swedish citizen has carried out and therefore also died in an attack,” said Swedish foreign ministry spokesperson Camilla Åkesson Lindblom to the TT news agency.
According to Åkesson Lindblom, the 36-year-old was the perpetrator of the attack. But she claims that the foreign ministry is still unsure about the man’s age, when the attack took place, where it took place or what the consequences of the attack may have been.
“A lot is still uncertain,” she said.
“That’s what we’re looking into via our embassy.”
According to various Islamist websites, the man was a Swedish citizen with roots in Tunisia. He is said to have carried out an attack near Mosul in northern Iraq in early August.
The Expressen newspaper reports the man was a 36-year-old man who lived in the Stockholm area with his wife and several children. He was also a well-established businessman before moving with his family to Egypt in 2006.
His wife, referred to only as Anna, told the newspaper that her husband had gone to Iraq to fight for an insurgent group affiliated with al-Qaeda. After not hearing from her husband for months, she decided to move back to Sweden with her children.
On Monday, Anna received a phone call.
“It was a man who called. He said briefly, ‘Your husband is dead. He’s become a martyr’,” she told Expressen
“I’m proud of him.”
According to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, information about the attack found on the Islamist websites came from al-Qaeda.
A spokesperson for Swedish security service Säpo, Åsa Hedin, said on Thursday that Säpo had no comment on the matter.
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