LONDON — The Uzbek man who is suspected of steering a hijacked beer truck into a crowd of shoppers in central Stockholm last week had been recruited by the Islamic State, and had encouraged other Uzbeks to travel to Syria to fight for the militant group, Uzbekistan’s foreign minister said on Friday.
The suspect, Rakhmat Akilov, 39, was arrested a few hours after the April 7 attack that left four people dead and 15 others wounded. It was Sweden’s worst terrorist assault in decades. At a court hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Akilov’s court-appointed lawyer said that his client planned to plead guilty.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has not claimed responsibility for the attack. Experts note, however, that the militant group tends to do so when its loyalists are killed, and not when they are taken into custody, as was the case in Stockholm.
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By MARTIN EDSTRÖM, VEDA SHASTRI and TIM CHAFFEE on Publish Date April 9, 2017. Photo by Martin Edström for The New York Times. Technology by Samsung. Watch in Times Video »The statement by the Uzbek foreign minister, Abdulaziz Kamilov, was the first public indication that Mr. Akilov might have been doing the bidding of the Islamic State. Many Swedes have been asking how Mr. Akilov, who last year was denied asylum and was ordered to leave the country, managed to elude the authorities’ grasp.
Mr. Kamilov said that Mr. Akilov was born in 1978 in Samarkand, in central Uzbekistan. He traveled to Stockholm in 2014 to work on construction sites.
“During the time he spent abroad, he was recruited by emissaries of international terror organization Islamic State,” Mr. Kamilov said of Mr. Akilov. “According to the information available, he actively encouraged his fellow nationals to travel to Syria and to fight alongside Islamic State.
“He repeatedly sent propagandist videos with terror content to his relatives and other contacts in Uzbekistan,” Mr. Kamilov added, “trying to induce them to commit acts of violence against representatives of public authority, leadership and law enforcement of Uzbekistan.”
Mr. Kamilov, speaking to reporters in his country’s capital, Tashkent, said that “information on unlawful acts by Rakhmat Akilov was earlier relayed through intelligence agencies to one of our Western partners for further sharing with the Swedish side.” But he did not offer details or indicate whether the information had been given to Sweden.
Swedish officials did not appear familiar with Mr. Kamilov’s assertions. “The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Sweden has not received any such information,” the ministry’s press office said in a statement.
Mr. Kamilov also said that Uzbekistan had opened an investigation and had charged Mr. Akilov with involving minors in antisocial behavior; manufacturing and distribution of materials posing a threat to public security; and participation in extremist, separatist and fundamentalist organizations, among other prohibited groups.
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