Swedish security police arrest man for plotting terror attack in Somalia

Swedish man arrested for plotting Somalia attack

STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s security service on Tuesday arrested a man suspected of plotting a terrorist attack in Somalia, the latest in a string of Somali-linked terror cases in Scandinavia.

The man is a Swedish citizen and was detained in the Goteborg area in western Sweden, according to a brief statement from the security service, known as SAPO.

It said the man had been under investigation for some time and an arrest warrant had been issued prior to his capture. Several people will be questioned in the investigation, SAPO said.

SAPO spokesman Patrik Peter said the arrest was “undramatic” but refrained from giving any more details about the case.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the suspect responded to the allegations.

Since the 1990s, more than 50,000 Somalis have fled to Sweden, Denmark and Norway from the war in their homeland.

Police have expressed concerns about the radicalization of young men in Somali immigrant communities and say about 20 people have left Sweden to join Islamists waging an insurgency against Somalia’s government.

In December a Danish man of Somali descent killed 24 people in a suicide bombing in Mogadishu. A Somali man is facing preliminary charges of terrorism and attempted murder in Denmark for a break-in at the home of a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.