Swedish police said on Saturday that they had arrested a 39-year-old Uzbekistan-born man they believed had hijacked a beer truck and carried out a terrorist attack by driving the truck into a crowd of people in Stockholm the day before, killing four and injuring at least 15 others.
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Prosecutors and police officials did not identify the suspect, but Anders Thornberg, head of the Swedish Security Service, said at a news conference that the man had been on authorities' radar some time ago.
Thornberg said that the agency had looked into information it received on the suspect last year, but that it had not led to anything. He said the suspect was not on any current list of people being monitored.
The Swedish national broadcaster SVT reported that a bag with explosives had been found in the truck used in the attack.
Thornberg said that the agency had looked into information it received on the suspect last year, but that it had not led to anything. He said the suspect was not on any current list of people being monitored.
The Swedish national broadcaster SVT reported that a bag with explosives had been found in the truck used in the attack.
Some reports suggested the suspect was a father of four who had previously posted jihadist propaganda on his Facebook page and had images of people injured in the explosion at the Boston Marathon in April 2013.
On Saturday, the police chief, Dan Eliasson, said: "We have found something in the truck in the driver's compartment, a technical device that should not be there. I cannot say whether this is a bomb or some sort of flammable material."
Prosecutors said the suspect had not spoken, and there was no immediate word of any criminal charges. But Eliasson said there was "nothing to indicate we have the wrong person."
Eliasson would not say how long the suspect had been living in Sweden.
He said there were clear similarities with the deadly terrorist attack in London last month, in which a British-born man used a vehicle to mow down a crowd of people on Westminster Bridge before he was shot and killed by police.
On Saturday, people placed flowers outside the department store in Stockholm where the attack occurred as a memorial to the victims. Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm said that six of the injured had been released. Police said eight people remained hospitalised.
The beer truck, stolen earlier on Friday, mowed down pedestrians along Drottninggatan, a busy pedestrian shopping street.
The suspect was detained in a northern Stockholm suburb on Friday and later arrested on suspicion of having committed a terrorism crime, police said.
The New York Times
