One of the most central figures in the Swedish jihadist environment has died from corona virus reports the organisation Stiftelsen Doku.
“Abu Omar” is well known to security services in several countries, and has for a long time managed to avoid imprisonment. He has also been on a USA watch list over suspected terrorists.
All though he has managed to elude security services for several decennia, the man has now died from corona virus at the Swedish Huddinge hospital.
Abu Omar (not his birth name) was born in Morocco and migrated to Sweden in 1985. In 1993 he became a Swedish citizen. For a period of about one year, he let the now dead Al-Qaida leader Mohammed Moummou live at his address in Sweden.
During the 90s he was active in recruiting youths to Al-Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan and also collecting money for financing.
The man was also included in police investigations into the planning of a terrorist attack against the Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten in 2010, where 4 people from Sweden were sentenced to 12 years prison each.
During the trial, it was revealed that several of the men had gotten to know each other in one of the shops that Abu Omar was running.
Mohamed Aziz Belkaid, who was involved in planning the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels have connections to Abu Omar.
In 2006 Abu Omar’s apartment was raided. What was found was shocking. Large sums of money was found, upwards of $15 500. On one of the bundles of cash was written the name of Al-Qaida’s leader in northern Africa.
But despite strong evidence of Abu Omar’s involvement in the international terrorist scene, it could not be proved that the money would be used for terrorism. But he was convicted of among other things accounting offenses.
Despite strong evidence, and being one of the most infamous jihadist recruiters in Sweden, the man was never convicted of a terrorist crime.
In a report from the Swedish Defence University, a former employed in the Swedish military intelligence services, told that Abu Omar was one of several key persons that radicalized, recruited and financed extremism, and that he is well known both within international extremist environments and Western intelligence services.