US News & World Report
Reuters
By Jussi Rosendahl
The Chief of Turku Police Tapio Huttunen, Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipila and Finnish parliament member Annika Saarikko stand next to the memorial flowers at the Turku Market Square, in Turku, Finland, August 21, 2017. Lehtikuva/Roni Lehti via REUTERS REUTERS
By Jussi Rosendahl, Lefteris Karagiannopoulos and Tuomas Forsell
HELSINKI/TURKU, Finland (Reuters) – A Moroccan man suspected of stabbing dead two people in Finland was known to Finnish intelligence as a suspected extremist but was not being monitored, authorities said on Monday, as the prime minister urged parliament to fast-track a new security law.
Abderrahman Mechkah, an 18-year-old asylum seeker who had no criminal record, was shot in the leg and arrested after Friday’s attack in the city of Turku, in which eight other people were injured.
Police say they are treating it as the first terrorism-related attack in Finland, which the World Economic Forum has described as the world’s safest place to visit.
The Finnish intelligence service said in a statement it had received a tip-off earlier this year about Mechkah.
“According to the tip-off, the suspect seemed radicalized and was interested in extreme thinking,” it said, while adding there was no information to suggest a threat of an attack.
The service said Mechkah was not among the around 350 people it was monitoring in its terrorism prevention program.
Police requested on Monday that Mechkah and four other arrested Moroccans be held in pre-trial detention. A court hearing will take place on Tuesday at 0800 GMT, with Mechkah appearing via video link from hospital. He and his lawyer have yet to respond to the accusation against him.
The National Bureau of Investigation said it was requesting that he be detained pending investigation “for two murders with terrorist intent and eight attempted murders with terrorist intent”.
Investigators have not made clear what role the four other Moroccans are suspected of playing. They deny involvement. Police also issued an international arrest warrant for a sixth Moroccan national.
