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Swedish court frees Uzbek accused of planning bomb attack

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Swedish court frees Uzbek accused of planning bomb attack
The men were accused of having collected a large amount of chemicals. Photo: Police/via TT

An appeals court in Sweden has freed the last of three men arrested last May on suspicion of planning a terror attack, judging it could not be proven he had decided to carry it out.

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David Idrisson, a 46-year-old from Uzbekistan, was in March sentenced to seven years in prison by the Solna District Court, after the court ruled that he had purchased 560 kilos of calcium hypochlorite, 100 kilos of potassium hydroxide, and 50 litres of sulphuric acid with the aim of making a bomb. 
 
But the Svea Court of Appeal on Wednesday morning reversed the judgement.
 
"He had those chemicals. That's one thing," Ragnar Palmkvist, the judge in the case, told The Local. "But we also have to conclude that he had made the decision to commit that crime, and that we couldn't conclude." 
 
"The problem with proving cases regarding preparation for crimes is that it is just a preparation: you need to prove that the defendant has made a concrete plan to commit the crime." 
 
After the man received the ruling, rather than being released he was taken into custody by Sweden's Säpo security services under the Law on Special Control of Foreigners, his lawyer Thomas Olsson told the Expressen newspaper, adding that he and his client were satisfied with the outcome.
 
 
Palmkvist and the two lay judges also upheld the Solna Court's ruling that one of Idrisson's suspected accomplices had been innocent of preparing for a terror crime. "The main reason is that he was the accomplice to the first person and it wasn't proven that he had dealt with or had access to the chemicals," he said. 
 
Idrisson, who works in the building industry, claimed that he had bought the chemicals as part of his purchase of a bankrupt company. 
 
He maintained that he had been interested in the large quantities of paint the company had in stock, but had had to buy the other chemicals as part of the lot. 
 
But the prosecutor Per Lindqvist detailed in court the men's online contact with Islamic State terrorists, and showed that Idrisson had obtained instructions for making a bomb.  
 
The Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the district court to find three men, including Idrisson, guilty of breaking Sweden's terror financing law. 

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