LONDON — Those who knew the prime suspect in the Stockholm bombings described him as highly intelligent as a child in Sweden, but stubborn and often in trouble. Those who prayed and studied with him in England, where he attended college from 2001 to 2004 and reportedly lived until weeks before the attack, spoke of a friendly associate who fervently sought an audience for increasingly extremist views but was quick to anger and slow to forgive.
His own words, sent in statements to the Swedish news media and the police minutes before he detonated the crude bombs that would kill him, and wound two others, on a busy shopping street in Stockholm, show him as a loving husband and father, as well as a vehement Islamic extremist able to talk tenderly of his children and determinedly of killing in the same breath.
As investigators searched properties in Sweden and England, piecing together the details of the failed terrorism plot, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, 28, a disaffected Iraqi Swede who had studied in Britain and whose final statements hint at a link to the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Perhaps the clearest picture was provided by Qadeer Baksh, a leader at the Luton Islamic Center, a small red-brick mosque in the county of Bedfordshire north of London. He said Mr. Abdaly attended the mosque during the festival of Ramadan in 2007 — sleeping there, as some Muslims choose to, during the last 10 days of the monthlong celebration.
Mr. Abdaly, he said, was very friendly, “very polite, and very helpful, he’d be making people cups of tea when the fast was broken, talking to people — it was almost too much, actually.” But when elders from the mosque tried to join his conversations with other congregants “he’d say nothing, he’d just go silent.”
On the fifth day of the stay at the mosque, Mr. Baksh said, one of the imams found out that the affable new member was quietly, carefully, preaching “rebellion against Muslim rulers, and talking about the oppression of Muslims. It was nothing violent, but it was extremist.” And it disturbed many of the congregants, who guard vigilantly against any revival of the mosque’s past links to extremists like the banned cleric Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed.
The next day, when the congregation gathered for dawn prayers just after 5 a.m., the imam gave a lecture to those present, directed subtly at Mr. Abdaly, on the dangers of such extremist views.
“He got up and stormed out halfway through,” said Mr. Baksh, “and we never saw him again. He seemed very emotional, very confused, very frustrated. Normally when someone is challenged they can present arguments from the Koran, but he didn’t have the knowledge or the understanding to communicate, so he just left.”
Mr. Abdaly, said Mr. Baksh, was subsequently informed that he was not welcome to return.
In photographs, Mr. Abdaly appears as a tall, stern-looking and smartly dressed man, his black hair and beard cropped short. In one image he is seen posing in sunglasses and a sharp black jacket. Tariq Rasul, a friend while Mr. Abdaly studied in England, said in an interview Monday that the Swede wore only Western clothes despite his devoutness.
Mr. Abdaly, according to a profile he posted on an online dating Web site, Muslima.com, was born in Baghdad and moved to Sweden with his family in 1992, when he was 10 years old. His childhood friends in the small and prosperous town of Tranas, three hours by car from Stockholm, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that he arrived with a big sister and his mother and father.
As a child he was “above average,” according to a teacher quoted by Aftonbladet. But “Taimour got himself into a lot of trouble,” said one unidentified friend, “and fought a lot.” Later, the friend said he “wondered if he didn’t actually have a hard time finding his place in Swedish society.”
Mr. Abdaly’s Facebook page contains hints of that apparent conflict. He posted several videos dedicated to Islamic fighters around the world, and his profile picture showed hooded figures waving the black flag of Al Qaeda. But among his listed interests were “National Geographic” and “I love my Apple iPad.”
The Facebook profile also indicates he studied “sports therapy at the University of Bedfordshire.” In a statement Monday, the university said that Mr. Abdaly, going by the name of Taimour Abdalwahab, attended the college between 2001 and 2004.
British news media reports suggest that he may have stayed in Luton, home of one of the university’s campuses, after earning his degree until as recently as three weeks ago. According to reports in the Swedish news media on Monday, Mr. Abdaly’s wife and three small children are still in Britain. Little is known, so far, of his immediate family, and the media accounts could not be verified.
But on the undated Muslima.com profile, he said he had been “married since 2004,” according to a translation from Arabic. He described himself as “very religious” and said two of his daughters were 3 and 1. Little is known of Mr. Abdaly’s final weeks in Sweden, and his last steps toward the attack. But in recorded messages, made in English and Arabic and sent by e-mail to the Swedish police and the news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra just minutes before the bombings, he made reference to “the Islamic state, may Allah protect it, and its people.”
“I have no doubt he’s talking about the Islamic State of Iraq, which is what Al Qaeda in Iraq calls itself,” said Evan Kohlmann, an expert on Al Qaeda communications and recruitment who consults for the Department of Justice. “Other groups do not use this language — it’s a quite specific reference.”
In 2007 Al Qaeda in Iraq, which intelligence agencies say is a mostly Iraqi militant group with some foreign leadership, issued a threat against Sweden, in response to a drawing published in a Swedish newspaper that depicted the head of the Prophet Muhammad on the body of a dog. No group has yet claimed responsibility for Mr. Abdaly’s attack, and the authorities have released no information on any affiliations he might have had. But Swedish investigators said Monday that they did not believe Mr. Abdaly had acted alone.
In the final sections of one of the recordings, Mr. Abdaly turns to address his family. “Tell the children that I love them,” he said, tenderness in his voice, “and their dad couldn’t sit back and watch the pigs humiliate our beloved Prophet Muhammad.”
Mr. Abdaly died, lying on his back in a pool of blood on a Stockholm street, just a few hours before his 29th birthday.
By RAVI SOMAIYA,
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