STOCKHOLM — Swedish authorities said Monday that the suicide attacker who blew himself up in Stockholm over the weekend was carrying at least three bombs and may have had accomplices.
Prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand said the man, believed to be 28-year-old Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, was also the owner of the car that exploded Saturday afternoon in a busy shopping district in the Swedish capital. A few minutes later, the bomber blew up explosives he was carrying, becoming the only fatality in the two blasts. Two people suffered minor injuries.
Al-Abdaly was an Iraqi-born Swede who maintained a home in Britain and who once stormed out of a mosque there after being told that his extremist religious views were unacceptable. British investigators late Sunday and early Monday searched the home where al-Abdaly is believed to have lived.
Lindstrand said the attacker wore an explosives belt, carried a backpack and held a pressure-cooker-like device in his hands. All three contained bombs. One of the explosives may have detonated prematurely before al-Abdaly could reach his target, possibly Stockholm’s central train station or a popular shopping mall, where the death toll from such an attack could have been high.
Investigators are now trying to determine whether the bomber acted alone or belonged to a terrorist cell.
“We know that he was alone in the actual execution, but we also know from experience that there tends to be more people involved in such acts,” Lindstrand told reporters. “We assume that he had accomplices in some way.”
Minutes before the bombs went off, a Swedish news agency received an e-mail with sound files that warned of jihad against Sweden and its people. The message lambasted the Scandinavian country for sending troops to Afghanistan and for its “war against Islam.”
