SWEDEN observed a minute of silence during an official day of mourning to honour the four people killed and 15 wounded in a lorry attack on shoppers in Stockholm last week.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told a crowd outside Stockholm City Hall that “the whole of Sweden” sympathised with the families and friends of the victims, thanking the police and other officials for their courage “from the bottom of my heart”.
He said the countries of the four victims – Briton Chris Bevington, 41, two Swedes and a Belgian woman – had suffered “horrendous acts of terrorism, but we have also seen the strength and determination and power of our democratic societies”.
“We will never surrender to terror. We will get through this together,” Lofven said.
Police have arrested a 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan whose residency application was rejected last year.
He is being held on suspicion of terrorist offences and police said he was known for having been sympathetic to extremist organisations. A court is due to decide on his detention today.
A second person has also been arrested in the case but police have given no details about them.
Four others questioned about the attack have been released.
Stockholm regional police commander Jan Evensson said suspicions against the Uzbek suspect “had grown stronger and we are pretty sure we’ve got the right man”.
“He will sit behind bars for the rest of his life,” he told Swedish SVT television.
Earlier yesterday, people gathered outside the upmarket department store where the lorry ploughed into a crowd of shoppers.
Among them was John Holmstrom, who works at the Ahlens store and said he had been at work just two hours before the attack.
“It’s been a real shock, all this week and everything around this weekend about this accident,” he said.
“I know a lot of people that were really, really close to getting hit by the truck.”
Carl Forsaljare, a magazine seller, was in the area during the attack but said he was not surprised it happened in peaceful Sweden.
“I said just a week before that it’s just a matter of time before it is going to pop up in Sweden,”
he said.
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