Svenska Dagbladet reports via Iraqi Media Net that according to two Islamist websites, Taimour Abdulwahab went to Iraq (SE), and participated in a Jihad training camp there by the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq organization. He then returned to Sweden to carry out the organization's promise from 2007, that Sweden will pay a price for insulting the Prophet. The Guardian adds that the Islamic State in Iraq praised the suicide attack.
In Sweden Taimour Abdulwahab wasn't very religious: he drank beer, went to nightclubs, had an Israeli girlfriend and wasn't interested in Islam. But in the UK he changed so much, that he named his son Osama, born last summer, after Osama bin Laden. In 2006 or 2007 he attended the Luton Islamic Centre, where he preached Jihad. In 2007 or 2008 he went to Yemen, and also visited other countries, to hear lectures and study.
Farasat Latif, the secretary of the Luton Islamic Centre:
‘At first he was very popular as he was helpful and polite. He then started preaching, though – and that’s when it went wrong. After early morning prayers he started preaching about Islamic countries that helped the West, like Saudi Arabia, and called for a revolution there.
‘It was fed back to the committee of the mosque who explained that his ideas were incorrect. He seemed to accept it. We thought we had led him back to the truth.
‘One day during morning prayers in the month of Ramadan – there were about 100 people there – the chairman of the mosque stood up and exposed him, warning against terrorism, suicide bombings and so on.
‘He knew it was directed at him. He stormed out of the mosque. His radicalism came from certain websites that preach extremist views.’
(...)
‘If we rang up the police and reported him on his views at the time, they would have laughed at us and done nothing.’
The centre’s chairman Qadeer Baksh:
‘The community did not know that he would take it so far as to then sow the seeds of discord and extremism.’
Asked why he did not report Abdulwahad to police, Mr Baksh said the mosque would never put ‘any non-Muslims or Muslims’ in danger, and did not believe he was a risk at that stage.
The Swedish Security service say they didn't know about Taimour previously, saying he was like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky. His car, which he detonated full of gas canisters, was bought as late as November. It is estimated that the explosives he carried could have left one hundred dead and 400-500 injured.
