1. Terrorist Awakening in Sweden?
- Author:
- Dr. Magnus Ranstorp
- Publication Date:
- 01-2011
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- For decades, sweden has been regarded as the relative backwater of international terrorism. Even Usama bin Ladin had mentioned Sweden as immune from terrorism in an al-Jazira broadcast in October 2004. This sense of immunity was shattered twice in December 2010. First, a suicide bomber struck in the Nordic countries for the first time ever on December 11. The Swedish security service, Säkerhetspolisen (SÄPO), had no record of the bomber before the attack, as he had studied and lived for a decade in the United Kingdom. At the same time, he admitted he had traveled to Iraq to perform jihad. Second, four Swedes were arrested later that month for planning to conduct a protracted Mumbai-style attack on the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Copenhagen, Denmark. The men were arrested after driving from Sweden to Copenhagen to execute the attack. Third, SÄPO produced a report on violent.Islamist extremism which outlined that it had identified about 200 extremists in Sweden; more than 80% were socially connected, and most lived inside the three major cities of Sweden, with more than half residing in Stockholm.
- Topic:
- Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Iraq, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, and Mumbai