Scottish police arrest man over Stockholm bombing

Reuters , Tuesday 8 Mar 2011

Man arrested by Scottish police on suspicion of 'aiding terrorist activity'

Scottish police said on Tuesday they had arrested a foreign national under anti-terrorism powers in connection with the botched suicide bombing in Stockholm last December.

Taymour Abdulwahab, a Swedish national of Middle Eastern descent, was killed in an attempted attack on downtown Stockholm after a bomb belt he was wearing went off prematurely.

Police said a 30-year-old man had been arrested in Glasgow under the Terrorism Act over the incident, following an intelligence-led operation.

"It's in connection with an incident in Sweden which was in Stockholm, a car bomb incident," a spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police said.

She said the arrested man was alleged to have been involved in "aiding terrorist activity" outside Scotland. "There's no kind of evidence to suggest there's a direct threat to Scotland," she said.

The police did not give the man's name or nationality.

In January, the director of Iraq's anti-terrorism unit said Abdulwahab, who lived in Sweden in the 1990s before relocating to Britain to study for a time, had received explosives training in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Swedish police believe he was preparing to attack a train station or department store at the height of the Christmas shopping season.

Short link: