Stockholm truck attacker sentenced to life by Swedish court

A Swedish court sentenced Rakhmat Akilov, a failed Uzbek asylum seeker, to life in prison on Thursday for killing five people and injuring another 10 when he slammed a stolen truck into shoppers on a busy street in Stockholm in April 2017.

"The defendant has among a series of crimes been found guilty of terrorist offense by murder in five cases. The penalty has been set to life imprisonment," the Stockholm District Court said in a statement.

On April 7 last year, Akilov hijacked a beer truck outside a restaurant in central Stockholm and sped some 500 meters (yards) down a pedestrian street, plowing into shoppers before crashing the truck into a department store.

He was arrested the same day outside a gas station in a Stockholm suburb after he was recognized from a CCTV image and quickly admitted to being the driver of the truck. He stated during the trial that he wanted to punish Sweden for its part in the global fight against radical group Islamic State.




REUTERS

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