Uzbekistan ‘had warned West about Stockholm attack suspect’

TASHKENT: Uzbekistan’s security services passed information on Rakhmat Akilov, the man accused of ramming a truck into a crowd of people in Stockholm last week, to the West before the deadly attack, Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said on Friday.
Kamilov told reporters Akilov had been recruited by Daesh 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 on Daesh’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,” he said without identifying the intermediary country or organization.
An Uzbek security source said earlier that Akilov had tried to travel to Syria himself in 2015 to join Daesh but was detained at the Turkish-Syrian border and deported back to Sweden.
“Given his refugee status, he was deported back to Sweden,” the source said.
The source added that in February this year, Uzbekistan’s authorities had put him on a wanted list for people suspected of religious extremism.
Akilov on Tuesday confessed to a “terrorist crime” for the truck attack that killed four people and injured 15 others on Friday, his lawyer said.
He had reportedly said he had received an “order” directly from Daesh to carry out the attack, according to Swedish media reports.
Akilov, a construction worker who had been refused permanent residency in Sweden, was arrested several hours after the attack.
He had gone underground after his application for Swedish residency was rejected last year, police said.