Tag Archives: Sweden

Uzbekistan says told West that Stockholm attack suspect was IS recruit

People lay flowers near the crime scene at Ahlens department store at the pedestrian street Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 12, 2017. TT NEWS AGENCY/ Fredrik Sandberg via REUTERS

TASHKENT (Reuters) – Uzbekistan’s security services warned a western ally before last week’s deadly truck attack in Stockholm that the suspected perpetrator was an Islamic State recruit, Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said on Friday.

Kamilov told reporters that Rakhmat Akilov had been recruited by the jihadist group after he left the Central Asian nation in 2014 and settled in Sweden.

“According to the information that we have, he actively urged his compatriots to travel to Syria in order to fight at Islamic State’s side,” Kamilov said, adding that Akilov had used online messaging services.

“Earlier (before the attack), information on Akilov’s criminal actions had been passed by security services to one of our Western partners so that the Swedish side could be informed.”

Kamilov did not identify the intermediary country or organization.

A spokesman for Sweden’s security police declined to comment on Kamilov’s statement. The police said last week they had intelligence on Akilov in 2016 that they could not verify.

An Uzbek security source said on Wednesday that Akilov had tried to travel to Syria in 2015 to join IS but was detained at the Turkish-Syrian border and deported back to Sweden.

The source added that Uzbekistan authorities had in February put him on a wanted list of people suspected of religious extremism.

(Reporting by Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov; Additional reporting by Bjorn Rundstrom in Stockholm; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Katya Golubkova and John Stonestreet)

Suspect in Stockholm truck attack admits terrorist crime

Policemen guard next to the court before the detention hearing of suspect in Friday's attack in Stockholm, Sweden April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Anna Ringstrom

By Anna Ringstrom and Johannes Hellstrom

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A failed asylum-seeker accused of ramming a truck into a Stockholm crowd last week, killing four people, has confessed to committing a terrorist crime, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Uzbekistan man Rakhmat Akilov, wanted for deportation at the time of Friday’s attack, made his first court appearance, entering the heavily guarded courtroom with a green sweater over his head and flanked by his lawyer and a translator.

Police say they believe the 39-year-old hijacked a beer truck and drove it into a busy pedestrian street in the Swedish capital before crashing into a department store.

Two Swedes, a British man and a Belgian woman were killed in the attack. Fifteen were injured. Eight people remain in hospital, including two in intensive care.

The attack has shattered any sense Swedes had of being insulated from the militant violence that has hit other parts of Europe, but has prompted defiance from Prime Minister Stefan Lofven who says Sweden will remain an open, tolerant society.

Akilov, who was asked by the judge to remove the sweater from his head, made no comment at the start of the hearing. His lawyer, Johan Eriksson, told the court that his client had admitted the crime. The judge then ordered the hearing to proceed behind closed doors.

Eriksson later told reporters outside the court that Akilov has described his motives to authorities, but the judge had ordered the lawyer not to discuss details of the case in public.

“He has not just confessed. He has provided information, he is answering questions,” Eriksson said.

Akilov was arrested just hours after the truck attack on the highest level of suspicion in the Swedish legal system. He had already been wanted by police for failing to comply with a deportation order after being denied permanent residency.

The judge on Tuesday remanded Akilov in custody for a month. Police have said it could take up to a year to complete the initial investigation into the attack.

Police say Akilov has expressed sympathies with extremist organisations. Security services have said that he had figured in intelligence reports but they had not viewed him as a militant threat.

A Facebook page appearing to belong to him showed he was following a group called “Friends of Libya and Syria”, dedicated to exposing “terrorism of the imperialistic financial capitals” of the United States, Britain and Arab “dictatorships”.

Legal documents show Akilov had asked for Eriksson to be replaced by a Sunni Muslim lawyer, but the court denied his request.

“We have a good relationship and we are working together in this case,” Eriksson said on Tuesday.

Sweden’s prosecution authority said on Tuesday it had revoked the arrest of a second, unidentified suspect in connection with the truck attack.

However, this man would remain in custody due to an earlier decision that he be expelled from Sweden, the authority said.

“According to the prosecutor, the suspicions have weakened and there is, therefore, no ground to apply for a detention order,” it said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Mark Bendeich)

Four killed by truck driven into crowd in Swedish capital

A view of the site where a truck drove into a crowd and into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Dominik Armada

By Johan Ahlander

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A truck plowed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing four people and wounding 15 in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.

Swedish police said they had arrested one person after earlier circulating a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie. They did not rule out the possibility other attackers were involved.

“We have a person who is arrested who may have connections to the event in Stockholm earlier today,” police spokesperson Towe Hagg said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

“I turned around and saw a big truck coming toward me. It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people,” Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters.

“It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it,” he said.

“It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever.”

Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on police orders. Government offices were closed. (Map of attack location – http://tmsnrt.rs/2oguW2M)

“Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit to western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the capital.

Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, said a Reuters witness who saw policemen put what appeared to be two bodies into body bags. Bloody tyre tracks on Drottninggatan (Queen Street) showed where the truck had passed.

The truck had been stolen while making a beer delivery to a tapas bar further up Drottninggatan, Spendrups Brewery spokesman Marten Lyth said. A masked person jumped into the cab, started the truck and drove away.

“We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming,” a witness who declined to be named told Reuters.

“Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see,” said the man, who saw the incident from his car.

Police said four people had died and 15 were injured. National news agency TT said those hurt included the delivery driver, who had tried to stop the hijack.

Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.

Magnus Ranstorp, head of terrorism research at the Swedish Defence University, told Reuters the attacker’s approach was similar to those in Berlin and Nice: “Hijacking a truck, that has happened before.”

“And this is a pretty cunning modus operandi,” he said. “To drive to Ahlens (department store) and stop … There is a way down to the subway just a few meters away from there, and then you … can jump on any train you want and quickly disappear.”

Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf said in a statement: “Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families.”

“An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all,” said European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker.

Stockholmers opened up their homes and offered lifts to people who were unable to get home or needed a place to stay.

The attack was the latest to hit the Nordic region after shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2015 that killed three people and the 2011 bombing and shooting by far right extremist Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in Norway.

Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale attack, although in December 2010, a man blew himself up only a few hundred yards from the site of the latest incident in a failed suicide attack.

In February U.S. President Donald Trump falsely suggested there had been an immigration-related security incident in Sweden, to the bafflement of Swedes.

Swedish authorities raised the national security threat level to four on a scale of five in October 2010 but lowered the level to three, indicating a “raised threat”, in March 2016.

Police in Norway’s largest cities and at Oslo’s airport will carry weapons until further notice following the attack. Denmark has been on high alert since the February 2015 shootings.

Neutral Sweden has not fought a war in more than 200 years, but its military has taken part in U.N peacekeeping missions in a number of conflict zones in recent years, including Iraq, Mali and Afghanistan.

The Sapo security police said in its annual report it was impossible to say how big a risk there was that Sweden would be targeted like other European cities, but that, if so “it is most likely that it would be undertaken by a lone attacker”.

(Reporting by Stockholm newsroom; Writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Catherine Evans)

UK and Swedish watchdogs warn of international cyber attack

A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A large-scale cyber attack from a group targeting organizations in Japan, the United States, Sweden and many other European countries through IT services providers has been uncovered, the Swedish computer security watchdog said on Wednesday.

The cyber attack, uncovered through a collaboration by Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, PwC and cyber security firm BAE Systems, targeted managed service providers to gain access to their customers’ internal networks since at least May 2016 and potentially as early as 2014.

The exact scale of the attack, named Cloud Hopper from an organization called APT10, is not known but is believed to involve huge amounts of data, Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency said in a statement. The agency did not say whether the cyber attacks were still happening.

“The high level of digitalization in Sweden, along with the amount of services outsourced to managed service providers, means that there is great risk that several Swedish organizations are affected by the attacks,” the watchdog said.

The agency said those behind the attacks had used significant resources to identify their targets and sent sophisticated phishing e-mails to infect computers.

It also said Swedish IP addresses had been used to coordinate the incursions and retrieve stolen data and that APT10 specifically targeted IT, communications, healthcare, energy and research sectors.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Stephen Powell)

Swedish commission proposes cap on profits in welfare

A general view shows Stockholm January 17,

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden should impose a profit cap on private schools, hospitals and care homes funded by taxpayer cash, freeing up more money for investment to improve services, a government-appointed commission said on Tuesday.

Sweden was a trailblazer of deregulation in the health and education sector in 1990s, but many Swedes are now worried that public services have deteriorated while taxpayers are directly funding shareholder payouts by businesses.

“I do not think we should waste taxes in this way,” the head of the commission, Social Democrat politician Ilmar Reepalu, told reporters.

Sweden has slumped in international education rankings while reports of neglect in care homes and fat profits for companies offering housing to asylum seekers have prompted the center-left government to pledge to roll back some market-oriented reforms.

Government attempts to reform Sweden’s welfare sector will be eagerly watched by countries, such as Britain, which have followed a similar path in outsourcing some public services.

The commission recommended firms operating in the welfare sector be licensed and have a ceiling on profits, increasing the amount they would then invest in their businesses.

“I cannot believe that anyone would complain if more resources go to schools and tax money produces better school results,” Reepalu said. “Who would say no to 5,000 or 6,000 more employees who should reduce the pressures in care homes for the elderly?”

In 2014, Swedish regions and municipalities bought services for almost 120 billion Swedish crowns ($13.3 billion) from private welfare companies.

The proposed cap – on operating profit in relation to working capital of 7 percentage points plus the risk-free rate – would mainly hit private equity companies, Reepalu said. “It could well mean that a number of those private equity firms that operate in this sector … switch to other sectors.”

Profitability in tax-funded welfare firms was double that in the services sector in general, according to the report.

But the minority coalition may struggle to introduce a cap, despite widespread public support.

“A profit cap, whatever the level, means the incentive for entrepreneurs to invest money, time and creativity will disappear,” Marcus Stromberg head of school firm AcadeMedia, partly owned by private equity fund EQT V, said.

Annie Loof, head of the Center Party that is part of the center-right opposition, said the report should be “thrown in the waste basket.” Experts have also said a cap could break EU law.

Swedish refugee asylum center burns down in suspected arson attack

Firefighters extinguish a fire that broke out at a refugee accommodation in Fagersjo, south of Stockholm, Sweden on the night of October 16,

STOCKHOLM, Oct 21 (Reuters) – A Swedish asylum centre burned down overnight in a suspected attack by arsonists, police said on Friday, the second incident of its kind in a week in the Stockholm region.

Staff alerted police in the early hours of Friday after hearing noises and seeing lights outside the building, Stockholm police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said.

A fire then broke out, he said, adding police had opened an investigation. “Things do not just catch fire outside (a house) for no reason.”

Two staff and nine residents were at the centre at the time of the blaze, during which no one was hurt, Lindgren said.

Sweden reversed decades of generous immigration policies last year, introducing border controls and tougher laws after an a record number of asylum applications that coincided with unprecedented flows of refugees entering Europe to escape war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

Police have been keeping a close watch on the country’s asylum centres, several of which have since been attacked,
including one in southern Stockholm that caught fire early last Sunday.

No one was injured either in that blaze, which led to 37 residents being evacuated.

Lindgren said there was no indication the two fires were linked, or that the risk of attacks against asylum centres had increased.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; editing by John Stonestreet)

New hacking group detected targeting firms in Russia, China

A padlock is displayed at the Alert Logic booth during the 2016 Black Hat cyber-

By Eric Auchard

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A previously unknown hacking group variously dubbed “Strider” or “ProjectSauron” has carried out cyber-espionage attacks against select targets in Russia, China, Iran, Sweden, Belgium and Rwanda, security researchers said on Monday.

The group, which has been active since at least 2011 and could have links to a national intelligence agency, uses Remsec, an advanced piece of hidden malware, Symantec researchers said in a blog post (http://symc.ly/2aTHoOm).

Remsec spyware lives within an organization’s network rather than being installed on individual computers, giving attackers complete control over infected machines, researchers said. It enables keystroke logging and the theft of files and other data.

Its code also contains references to Sauron, the all-seeing title character in The Lord of the Rings, Symantec said. Strider is the nickname of the fantasy trilogy’s widely traveled main character Aragorn.

Separately, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab has labeled the same group using the Remsec spyware as “ProjectSauron”.

The newly discovered group’s targets include four organizations and individuals located in Russia, an airline in China, an organization in Sweden and an embassy in Belgium, Symantec said.

Kasperksy said it had found 30 organizations hit so far in Russia, Iran and Rwanda, and possibly additional victims in Italian-speaking countries. Remsec targets included government agencies, scientific research centers, military entities, telecoms providers and financial institutions, Kasperksy said.

“Based on the espionage capabilities of its malware and the nature of its known targets, it is possible that the group is a nation state-level attacker,” Symantec said, but it did not speculate about which government might be behind the software.

Despite headlines that suggest an endless stream of new types of cyber-spying attacks, Orla Fox, Symantec’s director of security response said the discovery of a new class of spyware like Remsec is a relatively rare event, with the industry uncovering no more than one or two such campaigns per year.

Remsec shares certain unusual coding similarities with another older piece of nation state-grade malware known as Flamer, or Flame, according to Symantec.

Kaspersky agreed that the same group it calls ProjectSauron appears to have adopted the tools and techniques of other better-known spyware, including Flame, but said it does not believe that ProjectSauron and Flame are directly connected.

Flamer malware has been linked to Stuxnet, a military-grade computer virus alleged by security experts to have been used by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program late in the last decade (http://reut.rs/2b2FA8z).

(Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Russia tops agenda for White House visit by Nordic leaders

President Obama and Nordic Leaders

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The leaders of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland will be treated to the pomp of a White House state visit on Friday, a summit where Russia’s military aggression will top the agenda.

President Barack Obama will welcome the leaders for talks focused on pressing global security issues, including the crisis in Syria and Iraq that has led to a flood to migrants in Europe.

Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 alarmed Russia’s Nordic and Baltic neighbors. With NATO considering ways to try to deter further Russian aggression, the White House wants to show support for its northern European allies.

“It is a way of sending a signal that the United States is deeply engaged when it comes to the security of the region, and we will be actively discussing what steps we can collectively take to improve the situation,” said Charles Kupchan, Obama’s senior director for European affairs.

Kupchan declined comment on specific measures the White House hopes to emerge from the summit.

Obama will be limited in what he can promise by the political calendar, given that his second and final term ends next year on Jan. 20. Americans are set to hold presidential elections on Nov. 8.

The visit will culminate in a star-studded state dinner in a tent with a transparent ceiling, with lighting, flowers and ice sculptures evoking the northern lights.

Pop star Demi Lovato, known for her support of liberal causes, will perform after guests enjoy a main course of ahi tuna, tomato tartare, and red wine braised beef short ribs.

Obama is expected to laud the humanitarian and environmental accomplishments of his guest nations, who have been key supporters of an international deal to curb climate change that the White House sees as a key part of Obama’s legacy.

“The president has often said, ‘Why can’t all countries be like the Nordic countries?'” Kupchan said.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton)

Nearly 90,000 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in EU in 2015

Two children gather poppies at a field next to a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Some 88,300 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in the European Union in 2015, 13 percent of them children younger than 14, crossing continents without their parents to seek a place of safety, EU data showed on Monday.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa reached Europe last year. While that was roughly double the 2014 figure, the number of unaccompanied minors quadrupled, statistics agency Eurostat said.

Minors made up about a third of the 1.26 million first-time asylum applications filed in the EU last year.

European Union states disagree on how to handle Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two and anti-immigrant sentiment has grown, even in countries that traditionally have a generous approach to helping people seeking refuge.

Four in 10 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Sweden, where some have called for greater checks, suspicious that adults are passing themselves off as children in order to secure protection they might otherwise be denied.

Eurostat’s figures refer specifically to asylum applicants “considered to be unaccompanied minors”, meaning EU states accepted the youngsters’ declared age or established it themselves through age assessment procedures.

More than 90 percent of the minors traveling without a parent or guardian were boys and more than half of them were between 16 and 17 years old. Half were Afghans and the second largest group were Syrians, at 16 percent of the total.

After Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Austria followed as the main destinations for unaccompanied underage asylum seekers.

Seeking to stem the influx of people, the EU has struck a deal with Turkey to stop people crossing from there into the bloc. Turkey hosts some 2.7 million refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Sweden on alert for possible Islamic State attack in Capital

Sweden's flag is seen near Stockholm Cathedral in Gamla Stan or the Old Town district of Stockholm

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden has received intelligence about a possible attack on the capital by Islamic State militants, local media reported on Tuesday, and security services said they were investigating undisclosed “information”.

Newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen as well as public broadcaster Swedish Radio, citing unnamed sources, reported the information was related to the threat of an attack, possibly in the capital Stockholm.

Expressen reported Swedish security police (SAPO) had received intelligence from Iraq that seven or eight Islamic State fighters had entered Sweden with the intention of attacking civilian targets.

A security police spokeswoman said she would not comment on any specific details of a threat, but said it was working with regular police as well as national and international partners.

“Security police are working intensively to assess received information, and it is of such a nature that our judgment is that we can not dismiss it,” she said.

Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale militant attack, but a man is currently is awaiting a verdict for allegedly building a suicide bomb with the intent of staging an attack in Sweden. In 2010 a suicide bomber died when his bomb belt went off prematurely in central Stockholm.

The Swedish terror threat level remained unchanged at level three on a five-grade scale, the spokeswoman said.

Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported Norwegian police were assessing whether or not the Norwegian royal family should proceed with a planned trip to Stockholm this weekend to celebrate the Swedish king’s 70th birthday, given the supposed terror threat.

(Reporting by Helena Soderpalm and Daniel Dickson, additional reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Alistair Scrutton Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)