Police have arrested a 30-year-old man in Glasgow in connection with a suicide bombing in Stockholm last year.
The foreign national was detained on suspicion of aiding terrorists in Sweden following a dawn raid on a tower block in a down-at-heel part of the city. Neighbours told The Times of their disbelief that the “respectable, friendly” tenant should be the target.
Strathclyde Police confirmed that they had been working with Swedish authorities as well as the Metropolitan Police and Bedfordshire Police on the case for the past month.
The Swedish security service said that the suspect, who has not been named, might be connected to the terrorist attack in Stockholm, but gave no further details. Sakerhetspolisen said that investigations by Strathclyde Police “show that there could be a connection between the person now arrested and the terrorist attack in central Stockholm on 11 December 2010, something the continuing investigation in Scotland will clarify”.
Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, 28, an Iraqi who studied at the University of Bedfordshire, blew himself up and injured two people in the botched attack. The hit was said to be the first suicide bombing in the country.
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Details of the Glasgow man’s possible connection to the incident were unclear. Officers from Strathclyde arrested him under the Terrorism Act just after 6am at his flat on the 19th floor of the 20-storey building in Whiteinch, in the west of the city, and took him to Helen Street police station.
Officers also searched two other properties in the city. Chief Superintendent Ruaraidh Nicolson said that the ongoing investigation had thrown up “absolutely no evidence” that there was a terrorist cell working in Scotland and wanted to reassure the public.
“We don’t have any evidence that this is focused on Scotland,” he said. “The threat actually is outwith Scotland in terms of international terrorism. This is not focused on any one community.”
He added: “We are working together with our community advisers, our community leaders, to make sure that Scotland is a safe place. If there are any repercussions, if there are any raised tensions, if there’s any focus on one community, we will be taking a robust stance on that.” He declined to give the nationality of the man arrested.
The suspect was living in Curle Street, an unfashionable address which is home to a mixture of native Glaswegians and young immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa.
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Andrew Neville, a 36-year-old voluntary worker, lived a few doors down from him. Mr Neville said that he had helped the man when he first moved into Curle Street two months ago. He had seemed a friendly and very respectable neighbour.
“He spoke English like it was his first language,” said Mr Neville. “He had dark skin, a little Asian-looking. He seemed very grounded, dressed in jeans and trainers, very casually. There was nothing really that stood out about him, that’s why I’m a bit shocked. It is a bit shocking to think a terrorist might live round the corner.
“When he was moving in, I helped him out of the lift with a chair. I took it to his front door, then he said: ‘I’ll take it from here’.”
Mr Neville said that he had once seen his new neighbour in the street outside Kelvin Hall, the sports venue, where he had been enthusiastically greeted by two friends.
The area immediately outside the arrested man’s flat was cordoned off by police tape last night and access to the neighbouring flats was restricted by officers. Another resident on the 20th floor said that he had “heard the guy’s door go in” about 6am. At 11am, officers in protective clothing were seen to remove bags of material, including electrical wiring, from the man’s flat.
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Councillor Kenneth McLean, who represents the area, said that the arrest was “worrying”. He said: “I’m as surprised as anyone. I’ve never heard of anything like this. In some areas you might get extremists but there is nothing like that at all.
“It’s a fairly traditional working-class area with some social housing and some larger properties. It is quite an active community. There is usually some youth disorder but that’s about as high a level [of crime] as you get. But these people have to live somewhere and he might have chosen this area because you would not imagine it.”