The ‘teenage’ Moroccan asylum seeker who has admitted to killing two people and wounding eight in what is believed to be Finland’s first ever terror attack, lied about his identity..
Abderrahman Bouanane, aged 22, claimed to be a 17-year-old boy called Abderrahman Mechkah when he arrived in Finland last year, and applied for asylum as an unaccompanied minor.
Bouanane appeared in court via video link last week, and confessed to carrying out the attack in Turku, but denied he had a terrorist motive.
Abderrahman Bouanane, 22, (pictured during the hearing at his hospital bed) confessed to carrying out the attack that left two women dead, but denied he had a terrorist motive
Killer: Bouanane, 22, claimed to be a 17-year-old boy called Abderrahman Mechkah when he arrived in Finland last year
Police have said he targeted women in the Friday afternoon attack at a market square in the southwestern port city. Two women were killed and six women and two men were injured.
His true identity, revealed in court documents, could be established following an international police investigation after his arrest, local media reports
‘(My client) admits manslaughter and injuries. But based on what the investigator has presented thus far, the crime was not necessarily with terrorist intent,’ his lawyer Kaarle Gummerus said at the time of the hearing last week.
He appeared via video link at a court in Turku, where the horrific stabbing frenzy happened on Friday.
As of Tuesday, Bouanane is the only suspect who remains in custody. Finnish police arrested a total of seven people after the attack, and have now released five of them without charge.
He appeared via video link at a court in Turku, where the horrific stabbing frenzy happened on Friday
It has emerged that Bouanane had been living in a Red Cross reception centre in Turku, and was appealing the result of an asylum application when the attack happened.
A spokeswoman from the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation said: ‘He has received the result of his asylum application and he has appealed it.
‘He is still in the (asylum) process.’
In a Twitter post the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said: ‘The offender in Turku incident is suspected on probable cause of murders and attempted murders with terrorist intent and placed in detention.’
It emerged last week that the Finnish intelligence service had received a tip-off earlier this year about Bouanane.
‘According to the tip-off, the suspect seemed radicalised and was interested in extreme thinking,’ a Finnish intelligence statement said, while adding there was no information to suggest a threat of an attack.
Two women were killed and six people were injured in the knife attack on Friday in Turku
Friday’s attack is being investigated as Finland’s first ever terror attack, but the killer denies being a terrorist
The service said Bouanane was not among the around 350 people it was monitoring in its terrorism prevention programme.
Bouanane, who was shot in the thigh by police minutes after the attack, appeared before the Turku court last Tuesday via video link from hospital.
Most of the hearing was held behind closed doors, but press photos taken at the beginning showed the suspect lying in his hospital bed, his head propped up on a pillow and his face shielded by a white sheet.
The motive for the attack is unclear, but the country’s intelligence agency SUPO said Monday that he might have been radicalised.
The investigation is the first into suspected terrorism-related crimes in Finland’s history.
Gummerus said it was ‘impossible to take a final stance at the moment’ on the issue of whether the stabbings were terrorism-related.