Belgium – attack

The man suspected of shooting and killing two Swedes in Brussels on Monday night has been in prison in Sweden. He stayed illegally in Sweden between 2012 and 2014, and it is at some point during this period that he was in a Swedish prison, the Swedish Immigration Service has confirmed to TT and Sweden’s flagship radio news program Ekot. “He has never had a residence permit in Sweden,” Press Chief Jesper Tengroth told Radio Ekot. The Swedish intelligence service SÄPO has had no information about what else the man has been doing in Sweden.
     “We believe and judge that he may have travelled around Europe and the world with false identities,” Fredrik Hallström, chief of operations at SÄPO, told SVT. He would not comment on whether the man committed crimes during his time in Sweden or was known to police. The man – a 45-year-old Tunisian – arrived back in 2011 on the Italian island of Lampedusa, an Italian government source told Reuters on Tuesday. He spent some time in Italy. Here, the police in the city of Bologna noticed him and suspected that he was radicalised. He was therefore monitored by Italian intelligence services. The man then moved to Belgium. He had previously sought asylum in Belgium, but had his application rejected in 2020. After the refusal, he remained in Brussels, where he lived without the legal residence permit, Belgian officials have said.
     On Tuesday evening, ISIS claimed that it was one of its members who shot and killed two Swedes in Brussels on Monday evening. /ritzau/