Infogence Incident Brief: Stockholm Bombings

An extract from our Infogence Intelligence Report. Find out more at www.infogence.co.uk

On the 11^th December, 2010, a car explosion and a suicide bomb attack injured two people, killed the bomber, and caused panic among Christmas shoppers in Stockholm, Sweden. Minutes before an email had been sent to news agency TT warning about the impending blasts, though it did not provide details of where the explosions would actually take place.

The Incidents

The first bombing occurred at 16:48 CET when an Audi 80 Avant car exploded at the intersection of Olof Palmes gata and Drottninggatan.

According to Rescue services spokesman Roger Sverndal, the car contained bottles of liquefied petroleum gas canisters. The car was also filled with a box of very sharp spikes designed to fly in all directions at the moment of the explosion. Two people were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

Amateur videos shot moments after the explosion show the car engulfed by flames although there appears to have been little damage caused to surrounding vehicles and shops. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XSdU1U0AqE&feature=player_embedded

The second explosion occurred at around 17:00 CET at the intersection of Bryggargatan and Drottninggatan, around 200 metres (650 feet) away from the first bombing.

Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, thought to be the suicide bomber, was found dead at the site with blast injuries to his abdomen. Close to him, a metal pipe and a rucksack filled with nails and an unknown substance suspected to be an explosive were found. According to reports, he shouted Arabic slogans before setting off the explosion.

An eyewitness interviewed by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper said something appeared to have blown up against the man’s abdomen.

“He had no injuries to his face or the rest of his body and the shops around him were not damaged,” he said.

The eyewitness, a paramedic identified only as Pascal, said he removed a “Palestinian scarf” from the man’s face in an attempt to free up his airways.  Another eyewitness said of the blast; “It shook the store that I was in, and then there was smoke and gunpowder coming into the store.”

The Warning

Minutes before the explosions, the Swedish news agency TT had received a message denouncing Sweden’s military presence in Afghanistan and threatening deadly attacks.

The statement, taking the form of audio recordings in Swedish and Arabic, criticised Sweden for having 500 troops in Afghanistan, and said that the Swedes’ “children, daughters and sisters will die like our brothers and sisters and children are dying”. It also made reference to a Swedish cartoonist, Lars Viiks, who depicted the Prophet Muhammed as having the body of a dog.

The Suicide Bomber

The suicide bomber is Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, a 28-year-old Iraqi Swede, born in Baghdad, who grew up in Tranas and who was naturalized as a Swedish citizen in 1992.

After graduating from secondary school in Sweden in 2001, he studied at the University of Bedfordshire in the UK, graduating with a degree in sports therapy in 2004. The same year he married a Swedish citizen, named Mona Thwany or “Umm Amira”, with whom he had two daughters and a son. He named his son Osama in honour of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. At the time of the bombings, he was living in Luton with his wife, who also holds fundamentalist Islamic views. He travelled back to Sweden on 19 November to visit his relatives in Tranas.

Reports indicate he had steadily become more religious as well as angry over the later 2000s. During Ramadan in 2007, he tried to recruit other Muslims who shared his political views at the Luton mosque when he was given a chance to preach. However, when confronted over his beliefs he stormed out of the mosque and was eventually banned from coming back.

The IED

According to various news sources the man had pipe bombs strapped to his body and a rucksack filled with explosives. Investigators believe the fact that his rucksack bomb was not used at all, and his failure to detonate his suicide belt in a crowded area, suggests that one of the pipe bombs strapped to his body exploded prematurely killing him before he could reach his intended target.

 

Pipe Bombs are Improvised Explosive Devices tightly sealed within metal pipes. The containment provided by the pipe means that simple low explosives can be used to produce a relatively large explosion while the fragmentation of the pipe itself creates potentially lethal shrapnel.

The bomb is usually a short section of steel water pipe containing the explosive mixture and closed at both ends with steel or brass caps. In this case eyewitness reports of smoke and gunpowder after the blast suggests that the terrorist used a black powder explosive, which could have been taken from Fireworks. It is likely that the explosive would have been ground fine to accelerate its burning rate.

A fuse is inserted into the pipe with a lead running out through a hole in the side or capped end of the pipe. The fuse can be electric with wires leading to a timer and battery or can be a common fuse used in most consumer fireworks.

The pressure of the explosive material when ignited would have built up very rapidly, rupturing the pipe with great force.

Growing Tensions

The incident comes amid increased scrutiny of social tensions within Swedish society after decades of heavy immigration from Muslim countries. In September, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party secured its first seats in parliament after winning nearly 6 per cent of the vote.

The Stockholm explosions represent the latest in a series of failed terrorist attacks by jihad groups aimed at western countries, including a foiled Yemeni plot to bomb US freight aircraft in October and a botched car bomb attack in New York’s Times Square in May.

 

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