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Europe
Finnish knife attacker who killed two identified with IS, police say
2018-02-08
[IsraelTimes] Asylum seeker Abderrahman Bouanane, who last year went on stabbing rampage in Turku, said to have acted alone, reacted to Syria bombardments.

Finnish police say the Moroccan asylum-seeker who killed two people and maimed eight others in last year’s stabbing attack in southwestern Finland identified strongly with the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group and was motivated largely by hatred after heavy bombardments by the Western-led coalition in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Whatever. Jihad is its own excuse — no other is needed.
Olli Toyras of the National Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday that Abderrahman Bouanane
This would be the gentleman who previously identified himself to the Finnish authorities as Abderrahman Mechkah, age 18. He arrived in Germany in 2015, where he was picked up in a number of cities for illegal entry and criminal assault, and gave a number of aliases before moving on to apply for asylum in Finland in 2016. He went on a knifing rampage when it became clear Finland would not grant him asylum, though he seems to think this is not terrorism. The police stopped him by shooting him in the fleshy part of his upper thigh, or thereabouts.
became radicalized some three months before the August 18 attack in the western city of Turku, and although he acted alone, he thought of himself as an IS fighter.

"We don’t think any group is being involved in this," Toyras said, although adding that the suspect’s phone and computer contained IS-related photos and material. "He has seen himself as a fighter, a soldier, a man of IS. He would have liked IS to have taken credit for the attack."

On the day of the attack, Bouanane had bicycled from Turku’s outskirts to the city center, bringing along two kitchen knives he had taken from a friend’s home.

He attended prayer at a local mosque before he started a stabbing rampage in Turku’s main market square that lasted some three minutes and left two women dead and eight others ‐ six women and two men ‐ maimed.

Toyras said Bouanane, born in 1994,
...which would make him a fully adult 23 or 24, not the boyish 18 he claimed on his asylum request...
had picked his victims at random. His initial target had been a Finnish soldier waiting at a bus station but he abandoned the plan as too risky.

Toyras said Bouanane had keenly followed earlier terror incidents in Belgium and La Belle France, was willing to die for "a martyr cause" and was waiting to be rubbed out by the Finnish police.

The suspect came to Finland in 2016 and saw later his asylum application rejected. But police said that was not considered the main motive.

Following the attack, police discovered a manifesto posted online by Bouanane that was strongly influenced by Moslem and IS world views and contained disparaging references to Western religions.

The case is being investigated as two counts of terror-related murder and eight counts of attempted murder with a terror-related motive.

State prosecutors are expected to file official charges by the end of February.
Posted by:trailing wife

#5  The police stopped him by shooting him in the fleshy part of his upper thigh, or thereabouts.

By his actions it appears to be a lot of fleshy parts between his ears too. Police finger a little jumpy on raising the projectile device and maybe pulled too soon.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2018-02-08 09:52  

#4  Finnish soldiers are always on the lookout. He could have been a Russian !
Posted by: Besoeker   2018-02-08 08:21  

#3  
His initial target had been a Finnish soldier waiting at a bus station but he abandoned the plan as too risky.


Too high a chance the soldier would resist. Ah,the brave Islamic warrior!
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2018-02-08 08:16  

#2  AbderrahmanMechkah, age 18.

A native Finn?
Posted by: Claviter Lumumba4844   2018-02-08 07:47  

#1  "He attended prayer at a local mosque before he started a stabbing rampage"

Bulldozer time.
Posted by: Woodrow   2018-02-08 03:27  

00:00