Police: Stockholm bomber alone at scene

Dec 7, 2011, 13:59 GMT

Stockholm - Swedish police said Wednesday that they thought the man who carried out a suicide bombing in Stockholm a year ago had been alone at the scene, but they were still investigating whether he had received ideological or financial support.

Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abday, a 28-year-old of Middle Eastern descent, was the only fatality in the December 11 attack near a busy shopping district in central Stockholm. Two bystanders were injured.

'There were no signs he belonged to (terrorist network) al-Qaeda Iraq,' security police chief Anders Danielsson said at a briefing about the investigation.

Since the incident, police have conducted 800 interviews and received about 1,200 tips, as well as searching various premises and reconstructing events, he said.

Danielsson and prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnstrom said that, since the perpetrator died in the blast, investigators lost a vital source of clues to the Scandinavian country's first suicide attack.

Qvarnstrom described Al-Abday's movements on the day of the attack, from the moment he left his parents' flat in the small town of Tranas, 275 kilometres south-west of Stockholm.

'There is a 40-minute gap in the timeline, where his movements are unaccounted for,' she said.

Security camera footage, from a petrol station he stopped at, suggested he was carrying a bomb strapped to his body, Qvarnstrom said.

Only some of the explosives detonated, due to malfunctioning electrical contacts. A car bomb also did not detonate. The vehicle - loaded with gas tanks, petrol cannisters and fireworks - was destroyed in a fire, minutes before the blast.

Danielsson declined to speculate on how many victims the suicide attack could have claimed, but said the full blast would have been 'sizeable.' Most of the bomb parts were bought locally in Tranas.

Qvarnstrom and Danielsson declined to comment on an investigation in Scotland, concerning a man suspected of possibly aiding the suicide bomber.

Al-Abday, his wife and their three children had lived in Luton, near London, before the attack.