This Week's 2nd Terror Attack in Europe - 19 Cars Burned in Stockholm

At least 19 cars burned, barber shop rocked by EXPLOSION in Stockholm suburb

FILE PHOTO. Burned cars are pictured in Gothenburg, Sweden. © AFP / TT News Agency / Adam Ihse

Some 19 cars have been torched in the northern Stockholm suburb of Marsta, while a small explosive device went off near a local barber shop. No suspects have been detained so far.

The early hours of Monday turned out to be very restless for the residents of the area, as they were woken up by at least two loud bangs which triggered a massive police and firefighter response.

It turned out an explosive device went off in front of a barber shop, heavily damaging its entrance, while cars were set alight in at least three locations across the neighborhood. Some 19 vehicles were destroyed by fire, according to local media.

So far, police have not established a link between the car fires and the explosion, treating them as separate incidents. Officers have been going door-to-door questioning residents but no suspects have been apprehended yet.

Arson attacks on cars have plagued Sweden for a few years now, happening in sprees and making international headlines.

Such incidents have repeatedly occurred in Stockholm and its suburbs, as well as other major cities, namely Malmo and Gothenburg.

The latter saw a particularly ‘hot’ August in 2018 when dozens of cars as well as several buildings were torched in a series of arson attacks.

The alarming growth of crime has resulted in certain neighborhoods of major cities, including Stockholm and Malmo, becoming virtual “no-go” zones. Authorities say high crime and poverty rates created these breeding grounds for gang violence and extremism.

Malmo, in particular, has developed a reputation as a crime hotspot in Sweden, where police went even as far as declaring a “hand grenade amnesty” back in 2018, urging residents to surrender their arsenals of explosives with no legal consequences or questions.

No-Go Zones are explicitly Muslim immigrants. While these particular acts may have not been acts of jihad, like the truck-attack in Limburg, Germany, but they are an indication of the lack of respect for the law and the country that took them in when they were desperate. There are a lot of criminal gangs and organized crime in these no-go zones, which is an indication of Sweden's government's remarkable stupidity for taking in far too many migrants than they were capable of handling.

Police Stopped Monitoring Stockholm Car-Rammer Less Than 3 Months Before Massacre

When western countries treat terrorists with the rights and freedoms of normal citizens, they will almost invariably use those freedoms as opportunity to destroy us; and we let them do it, over and over

FILE PHOTO: Tow trucks move the beer truck that crashed into the department store Ahlens after plowing down the Drottninggatan Street in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 7, 2017 © Fredrik Sandberg / Reuters

Police stopped surveillance of Rakhmat Akilov less than three months before he ploughed his car into pedestrians in Stockholm killing five, according to local media. Akilov was already planning the massacre at that time.

The Swedish Security Service (Säpo) started monitoring Akilov, a construction worker from Uzbekistan, on August 31st 2016 after receiving a tip that he might present a risk. However, the surveillance was dropped five months later – January 31st 2017. The pre-trial hearing revealed that Akilov had started preparations for the vehicle-ramming attack on January 16, 2017.

“The intelligence which existed was not in my judgement sufficiently concrete to provide grounds for the use of, for example, preventative force,” Runar Viksten, lead judge of Sweden’s military intelligence court, wrote in a Justice Department report seen by local media. Viksten insists that Säpo did “what was possible” about the Akilov case.

Säpo got information based on social media chats “which revolved around potential possibilities for a terror attack and not around any concrete plans,” according to Viksten “One must remember that it is not uncommon for people on social media and chats connected to militant Islamism to propose exalted thought and plans for attacks in order to boost their statuses,” he wrote.

The assault took place in Drottninggatan, one of Stockholm’s main pedestrian areas April 7, 2017. A truck driven by Akilov ploughed through a crowd, killing five and injuring over a dozen people. Akilov managed to flee the scene but was apprehended later that day. In January 2018 he was formally charged.

Soon after the attack, media and officials started revealing information about the suspect. It turned out that his asylum application had been rejected in summer of 2016 and he had been illegally hiding in Sweden ever since. Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that he had already been investigated for having terrorist sympathies in his home country. Recruited by Islamic State back in 2014, he apparently had called on his fellow Uzbeks to go to Syria and join the terrorists.

In the meantime, the Swedish TT news agency together with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty revealed the results of their own investigation on Akilov, suggesting that he was in contact with high-ranking IS members before, during and even after the massacre. The journalists analyzed online chats between Akilov and at least 12 of his contacts, described by the prosecutor as “terror-related.”

At the very least, Säpo needs an upgrade. They monitored him for 5 months after he was denied refugee status, but they did nothing about picking him up and kicking him out of the country. Why?

Stockholm Suspect was Failed Asylum Seeker, 2nd Man Arrested

4 killed were a British man, a Belgian woman,

and 2 Swedes

The Associated Press 

People gathered in Sergels Torg (square) in central Stockholm on Sunday for a 'Lovefest' vigil

against terrorism following Friday's attack. (Maja Suslin via Reuters)

The Stockholm truck attack suspect was a rejected asylum seeker from Uzbekistan who eluded authorities' attempts to deport him by giving police a wrong address, Swedish police said Sunday, while announcing the arrest of a second suspect.

Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police told a news conference that the 39-year-old suspect's request for a residence permit was rejected in June 2016, but police could not find him to send him back to his native country because he was not at the address he had given. Swedish police started formally seeking him on Feb. 24.

"We know he has been sympathetic to extremist organizations," said Jonas Hysing of Sweden's national police. He declined to name the suspect, who was arrested within hours of Friday's attack on shoppers in Stockholm.

Amazing! How did they find him? And in just a few hours, when they had 9 months to look for him and 6 weeks of formally looking for him. One suspects failed asylum seekers are not a very high priority for Swedish Police. But they should be!

Police officer Ivan Sokolowski is seen adorned with flowers given by well-wishers ahead of

Sunday's ceremony in Sergels Torg. (Philip O'Connor/Reuters)

A second person has been arrested in connection with the attack and is suspected of terrorist offences, including murder, spokeswoman Karin Rosander told The Associated Press. She did not give further details about the new suspect. Four others were being held by police.

500 people questioned

Evensson said authorities have questioned more than 500 people in the investigation so far.

The four victims killed in Friday's attack, in which a hijacked beer truck was driven into an upscale department store, included a British man, a Belgian woman and two Swedes, authorities in those countries said. Their identities were not released by Swedish officials.

The British government named the Briton as Chris Bevington, an executive at Swedish music-streaming service Spotify. Britain's Press Association news agency said he was 41. In Brussels, the Belgian news agency said the Belgian woman had been reported missing before she was identified by her papers and later by DNA testing.

A man paints a Swedish flag on a memorial board near the crash site outside Ahlens department store.

(Noella Johansson/TT News Agency via Reuters)

As of Sunday, 10 of the 15 people wounded in the truck attack in the Swedish capital remained hospitalized, including one child. Stockholm county spokesman Patrik Soderberg said four of the 10 were considered "seriously" injured and the remaining six, including the child, were slightly injured.

Soderberg said it was important that caregivers continue to give "long-term psychological support to those who need it."

One of the wounded, an 83-year-old Romanian woman who was begging on the city's pedestrian Drottninggatan shopping street when the attack took place, says she was "surprised" that passers-by helped her.

Police released these photos of the suspect on Friday. 'We still cannot rule out that more people are involved,' Dan Eliasson, head of Sweden's national police, told reporters on Saturday. (Police/TT via AP)

"I thought everyone would run past me and save themselves," Papusa Ciuraru, whose foot was crushed by a boulder displaced by the speeding truck, told the Expressen daily.

Speaking from her bed at the Saint Goran hospital in Stockholm, she said she "thought a war was going on" because "people around me were screaming."

The lion-shaped boulders on Drottninggatan are meant as roadblocks and have been put up in several European capitals after a truck attack last year killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin.

Ciuraru, who expects to be released Monday from the hospital, said she "tried to get up and run, but got a huge rock over my leg."

The stolen beer truck used in the deadly attack was removed from central Stockholm several

hours after several pedestrians were struck by the vehicle. (Maja Suslin/AFP/Getty Images)

On Sunday, tens of thousands of people gathered in bright sunshine on the downtown Sergelstorg square, near the site of the truck crash, for a memorial rally.

Rickard Sjoberg, one of the organizers, told the crowd there were probably people from out of town among them. "But today, we're all Stockholmers," he said to huge applause.

However, the attack left Swedes divided.

"You have one (side) saying 'This is enough, we can't have this. We must close the borders, throw everyone out,"' said Ulf Lundgren, a clergyman at Stockholm Cathedral. "Others say, 'You can't get security by closing the borders."'

Stockholm seemed to be returning to normal slowly Sunday. Flags on most public buildings, including Parliament and the Royal Palace, flew at full-staff.

'We don't like to live in bunkers'

"If people who are here, seeking asylum, and treat us like this, it is not good," Stockholm resident Lars Holm, 73, said after attending a service at the cathedral. "So now we have to have more security in our society, but still we don't like to live in bunkers. We want to have, as before, a free life and we welcome people from abroad."

The upscale department store that was rammed Friday by the truck apologized for an announcement that it would reopen two days after the deadly attack to sell damaged goods at a "reduced price."

The Ahlens store described it as "a bad decision" on its Facebook page, saying its motivation "was born out of the idea of standing up for transparency and not allowing evil forces take control of our lives."

'Damaged goods' sale cancelled

The store said it would reopen Monday "without any damaged goods."

A fire broke out Friday afternoon at the store after the truck smashed into shoppers at its entrance on Drottninggatan street. It was quickly put out by firefighters.

Police held raids overnight to bring other people in for questioning as authorities investigated the deadliest attack in Stockholm in years. Sweden's SAPO security police said it was working to find "any abettor or network involved in the attack."

"We have a lot of people who are being taken to police offices throughout Stockholm for questioning," police spokesman Kjell Lindgren told The Associated Press. "(We are doing) all the things that are necessary to make a good investigation. That means we are going to continue to check objects, people, vehicles and so on."

People leave flowers on the steps in Sergels Torg plaza to honour victims of Friday's attack.

(Gideon Malherb/Reuters)

Stockholm city officials, meanwhile, had moved thousands of flowers at a makeshift memorial to a nearby square after an aluminum fence outside the Ahlens store was overwhelmed with tributes and threatened to collapse.

The fence had been put up to keep people away from the broken glass and twisted metal at the attack site, and to allow forensic experts and police to gather evidence.

Huge boards covered the store's damaged front, where mourners had scribbled messages of sadness and encouragement to continue with their normal lives despite the attacks.

Thousands of people have visited the Stockholm crash site, including the prime minister, several government officials and Sweden's crown princess, to lay flowers and light candles in memory of the truck attack victims.

And in all that, did anyone turn to God?

Stockholm Truck Attack Kills 3; Terrorism Is Suspected

By CHRISTINA ANDERSON, MARTIN SELSOE SORENSEN and MARK SCOTT, NY Times

Police officers near the site where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store in central Stockholm on Friday. Credit Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A man steered a stolen beer truck into a crowd of people and then rammed it into a department store, killing at least three people in what officials were calling a terrorist attack in the heart of Stockholm on Friday afternoon.

“Sweden has been attacked. All indications are that it was a terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a statement.

The suspect in the attack was still at large. But at a news conference later in the evening, the Swedish police released a photo of a man being sought in connection for questioning.

The authorities said they did not know if it had been an isolated assault, or something bigger. The Swedish intelligence agency said “a large number” of people had been wounded.

A picture showing a man who is wanted in connection with the truck attack in Stockholm was released by the Swedish police on Friday. Credit Stockholm Police

Mats Löfving, the head of national operative department of the Swedish police, said, “This is now declared a national security event,” adding that officers across the nation were on heightened alert.

The Swedish Parliament was on lockdown, according to news reports. Train service in and out of the city grounded to a halt, and the police, who blocked off the affected area, urged people to stay at home and to avoid the city center.

The police said the first emergency call came in around 2:50 p.m. local time as the attack unfolded in Drottninggatan, Stockholm’s busiest shopping street. Witnesses described a scene of panic and terror.

“I saw hundreds of people running; they ran for their lives” before the truck crashed into the Ahlens department store, a witness identified only as Anna told the newspaper Aftonbladet.

Path of truck →

STOCKHOLM

Drottninggatan

Mäster Samuelsgatan

Crashedhere

Ahlens Department Store

Sweden

Katarina Libert, a 32-year-old freelance journalist, was trying on clothes at the department store when she heard a boom and the walls shook.

At first, she said, she thought the noise was people moving things around the store, but then the fire alarm went off and staff members told her and other shoppers to get out of the building.

“We were running, we were crying, everyone was in shock,” Ms. Libert said. “We rushed down the street, and I glanced to the right and saw the truck. People were lying on the ground. They were not moving.”

Ms. Libert, who followed others as they were guided by officials to shelter, added, “My sister in law and some friends are close to the scene and at lockdown, can’t leave their office.”

The front part of the truck ended up inside the department store.

Credit Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

She said that she usually avoided busy areas that could be potential terrorist targets, but that she had decided to take the Friday afternoon off to do some shopping.

“Some people felt that this was just a matter of time,” she said. “Paris, Brussels, London and now Stockholm. I just had a feeling something like this would happen.”

After the assailant plowed into people, the front of the truck ended up inside the department store.

A representative of the Spendrups brewery told Radio Sweden that the vehicle had been taken earlier in the day. A spokesman for the company told SVT, a national public broadcaster, that the truck had been stolen while the driver was loading it from the rear.

The brewery’s driver told the police that a masked man stole the vehicle, and that he was injured trying to stop him, the authorities said.

At the news conference, officials released a photo of a man wearing a hoodie. They did not name him as a suspect, saying only that they wanted to question him in connection with the attack.

The national police chief, Dan Eliasson, said, “We have the truck and the driver who usually drives it, but we do not have contact with the person or persons who drove it.”

Security was increased on Friday near the site of the attack. Credit Daniel Dikson/Reuters

Mr. Löfving, also of the police, asked for the public’s help in sharing the photo: “We want to get in touch with this man.”

The authorities also said that they could not confirm the number of dead or injured until they received more information from the hospitals.

The chief medical doctor at Stockholm’s Karolinska University Hospital, Nelson Follin, told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter that the hospital was treating “a handful” of people.

“The injuries are quite serious, but for now I cannot give further comments on conditions,” Dr. Follin said.

Previous accounts of shots being fired in parts of Stockholm were unfounded, the police said, adding that officers across Sweden were protecting high-risk sites.

The attack reverberated as far away as Norway, where the police said on Twitter that officers in that nation’s largest cities and at the airport in Oslo would be armed until further notice following the attack in Stockholm.

The assault came after several other episodes in Europe in the past year in which a vehicle was used to attack people.

The Islamic State group revived the idea of using cars as weapons after it broke with Al Qaeda in 2014. In the past year, ISIS militants have claimed responsibility for the deaths of more than 100 people in Europe.

In France, a man drove into a crowd on a busy seaside promenade during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice.

Another attacker plowed a truck into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin.

And last month, an assailant drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge near Parliament in London.

LONDON — A 31-year-old Romanian architect who plunged into the River Thames when a terrorist plowed a vehicle into pedestrians in London became the fifth victim to die as a result of the attack last month, the police said on Friday.

Other attempts, including an episode in which a man tried to drive over pedestrians in Antwerp, Belgium, claimed no victims, but have contributed to a sense of dread across the Continent.

Although some Swedes have expressed concern that immigration has led to a crime wave in the country — and President Trump seemed to suggest in a speech on Feb. 18 that there had been an attack in Sweden, when in fact nothing had occurred — the country and the region remain largely peaceful and safe.

MSM alert - As long as you don't count the extraordinary number of rapes, attempted rapes and sexual assaults on Swedish girls by migrant men. They don't seem to be very important to Sweden or the Main Stream Media - an acceptable sacrifice on the altar of political correctness and stupidity.

The most notable exception came in 2010, when an assailant killed himself and wounded two others after detonating two bombs in central Stockholm, on a side street not far from where the attack on Friday took place.

The attack in 2010 was said to be the first suicide bombing in Scandinavia, and it caused consternation in Sweden. It was linked to an Iraqi-born Swede who had attended college in Britain.

On Friday, the police said they were well trained for these types of episodes. “Last week we rehearsed a similar scenario,” said Anders Thornberg, chief of national intelligence.

Rioting in Swedish No-Go Zone Sparks Debate

Trump was wrong about rioting in Sweden last week,

but it only took 3 days to make him right

Cars were set on fire, police were pelted with stones and civilians were beaten up as violent clashes broke out between rioters and law enforcement in the Stockholm district of Rinkeby on Monday night.

Police say seven or eight vehicles were torched in the suburb of Sweden’s capital following unrest in the area, which has a high immigrant population. It’s unclear if any immigrants were involved in the incident.

The violence was reportedly instigated after police arrested a wanted person at a metro station in Rinkeby at around 8pm. Police say between 30-50 people were involved in the disturbances.

Large crowds gathered and several cars were engulfed in flames as firefighters battled blazing wrecks while strong winds whipped flames in all directions.

A police officer was injured during the fracas, forcing law enforcement to fire several warning shots, according to Swedish public service broadcaster SVT.

No injuries were reported as a result of the shots.

The riot has prompted a heated online debate

over what constitutes a ‘no-go zone.’

Any debate in Sweden regarding Islamization is a good thing. There needs to be an end to the conspiracy of silence by the police, government and media.

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet traced the rise of the ‘no-go’ tag, previously used in the media to describe the area affected by Monday’s riots, Rinkeby, to the publication of a Swedish police report on disadvantaged suburbs.

The December 2015 report did not specifically use the phrase ‘no-go area’, however, and in the wake of Monday’s disturbances, a Swedish journalist prompted an in-depth online debate about the use and accuracy of the term.

Rinkeby, an area in Stockholm, was the scene of street disturbances on Monday. According to police, an arrest escalated into stone-throwing at patrol units and an “officer was hit in the arm and slightly injured”. Police fired warning shots to disperse the crowd and say no injuries were reported as a result of these shots.

Following widespread coverage of overnight trouble in Stockholm, Ivar Arpi, a writer for Svenska Dagbladet, posed the ‘no-go zone’ question on Twitter:

Translation: “What do you think of the concept? What is missing, what catches?"

Swedish police have denied that there are ‘no-go zones’ in the country, reports Sverige Radio. But the term has provoked an outpouring of opinion online. “It is seriously misleading because it really means something else,” said Swedish journalist Daniel Wiklander.

Twitter users questioned whether the term correctly described areas in Sweden or if its use should be restricted to commentary about war zones. Others asked if the phrase was being misused to target and marginalise poorer urban areas.

“I understand the concept [as] the police don't go in there. Such areas are not as well known in Sweden.”

“I think that semantics are important, as Sweden's situation is discussed in international media and [they] like to use def no-go zones. In the United States no go zones mean a place where police don’t go without a very large [group]”

“‘No-go’ signals war zone and is perhaps too strong”

“In my view, [a no-go area] a neighborhood where law enforcement and health care cannot move freely without threats and residents take the law into their own hands.”

“Worth [looking] up what sort of neighborhoods get the stamp in terms of social class, crime, life of the inhabitants, etc.”

“It captures a feeling, but misses the reality.”

The discussion on ‘no go’ terminology came as Swedish opposition politician Annie Loof attacked government cuts and called for “more police & new legislation” for poorer areas.

Stockholm Burning - 2nd Night of Rioting in Muslim Sector

Vehicles set ablaze for 2nd night amid riots

in Stockholm suburb 

Violent riots continued for a second night in the southern Stockholm suburb of Alby, known for its significant immigrant population, RT’s Ruptly agency reports. Protesters set fire to cars and pelted police and emergency services with rocks and pyrotechnics.

On Thursday night, police were patrolling the suburb, which is home to large Syrian and Armenian diasporas, as well as more recent Iraqi refugees, when a rock flew through the back window of their parked car.

As officers searched for the culprits, the rioters set fire to tires on a public bridge, and poured gasoline over several cars, before lighting them up. When fire crews arrived they were also showered with projectiles.

On Friday night, police encountered yet more clashes with residents, although there has been no official confirmation of a link between the scuffles.

One man was arrested Thursday, but has since been released.

Click for video

Sweden’s last major riots took place in 2013, provoked by an alleged incident of police brutality. But there have been widely-publicized incidents involving foreign-born residents, including asylum center murders, and sexual assault cases, over the past year.

Sweden accepted nearly 170,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more per capita than any other EU state.

As Swedish law forbids police to record the ethnicity and origin of the perpetrators, the identity of the recent rioters is unlikely to be uncovered.

As with France, which forbids the inclusion of religion on census taking, this is a stupid law designed to protect religious minorities. But it makes the protection of the general public that much more difficult. It amounts to protecting the rights of criminals at the expense of the public.

Alby will soon be a no-go zone in Stockholm where Sharia will likely emerge - and the Islamization of Sweden continues.