Global General

Scottish police arrest man over Stockholm bombing

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-03-08 20:44

LONDON - 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.

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

Scottish 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.

"The investigation so far shows there could be a link between the arrested person and the terrorism crime in Stockholm on Dec. 11, something which further investigation in Scotland will have to make clear," Swedish security police said in a statement.

In January, the director of Iraq's anti-terrorism unit said Abdulwahab, who lived in Sweden in the 1990s, had received explosives training in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Abdulwahab studied at a university in Luton in Britain where he was believed to have become radicalised.