Finland ‘terror’ attack: Turku knifeman was Moroccan, say police

The Finnish word “Varokaa” which means “mind out” could well have been shouted by bystanders, and not be the assailant shouting “allah akbar” but I still feared that  this  stabbing was going to be a jihadist attack, because of the multiple victims and the focus on wounding their necks. But I wasn’t going to jump and say definite until I read something from a reputable source. 

This is the Telegraph reporting an information release from the Finnish police.

Police are now investigating a stabbing spree in Finland that left two people dead as a terrorist attack, police said Saturday, identifying the suspect as an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen.

“The act had been investigated as murder, but during the night we received additional information which indicates that the criminal offenses are now terrorist killings,” police said in a statement. The suspected attacker is believed to have been acting alone, but police have not ruled out the possibility that others may have been involved.

The suspect’s “identity is known to the police. He is an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen,” it said. Why has Finland taken a Morocccan? There is no war in Morocco. It’s still a tourist holiday destination. Did he pretend to be a Syrian genuinely fleeing from ISIS? 

The suspected attacker in Finland killed two people and wounded eight in the city of Turku on Friday before police shot him in the leg and arrested him. Police say both stabbing victims were Finnish, among eight injured were two Swedes and one Italian.

Finnish police arrested five people in a Turku apartment on Friday night as part of their investigation. “There was a raid and we have now six suspects in custody, the main suspect and five others,” said Det Supt Markus Laine of the national bureau of investigation. We are investigating the role of these five other people but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with [the attack] … We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect,” he said.

Reports in Finland said police believed the suspect had picked his victims at random, but Laine could not confirm that.

The first Muslims to live in Finland were Tartars  who moved there in the 19th century when Finland was a Russian Dutchy. But Islam was a minute presence in the country until the last 5-10 years. There is both a mosque and an Islamic school in Turku and I believe a lot of co-operation (much of it genuinely wholesome) between Muslims in Finland and their fellows across the Baltic in Sweden.