Finnish court names stabbing attack suspect


People placing candles and flowers on a site of a stabbing at the Market Square in Turku, Finland, on Saturday. Two people were killed and eight people injured on Friday in a stabbing spree on two market squares in the city, that police now define as a terrorist act. – EPA pic, August 21, 2017.

COURT documents today identified the suspect in last week’s stabbing spree in a Finnish city – being probed as the country’s first ever terror attack – as 18-year-old Abderrahman Mechkah.

Police have previously described the suspect as an asylum seeker from Morocco who deliberately “targeted women” in the attack in a market square in the southwestern port of Turku on Friday, which left two people dead.

The Turku district court documents did not specify Mechkah’s nationality.

Mechkah, whom police shot in the thigh when they arrested him minutes after the rampage, is to appear before the court on Tuesday via video link, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said.

His court appearance had initially been scheduled for today.

Police will ask the court to remand him in custody suspected of two murders and eight attempted murders “with terrorist intent”.

Police will also request the detention of four other Moroccan citizens, who were arrested in an overnight raid on a Turku apartment building and refugee housing centre just hours after the attack. – AFP, August 21, 2017.


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