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Gothenburg terror trial comes to a close

AFP/The Local
AFP/The Local - [email protected]
Gothenburg terror trial comes to a close

The Gothenburg trial of two Swedish citizens charged with "planning terrorist crimes" in Somalia ended Wednesday.

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A clerk at the district court in the southwestern city of Gothenburg confirmed to AFP that the trial had ended and that both men, aged 22 and 26, would be remanded in custody until a verdict is rendered on December 8th.

Prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnström asked for at least three years in jail for Mohamoud Jama and Bille Ilias Mohamed, who were arrested in Gothenburg and Stockholm in May and June this year.

"A terrorist crime has such tremendously grave consequences, not just for individuals but society," she said in her closing statement, according to Swedish news agency TT.

According to the charge sheet, the two men are members of the Somali Islamist movement al-Shabaab, which has declared allegiance to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network and controls most of southern and central Somalia.

The two men, one arrested in Gothenburg in May and the other in Stockholm the following month, are suspected of having plotted suicide attacks in Somalia, with the aim of "murder" or "maiming" a large number of people and causing "massive damage to property," the charge sheet said.

The prosecution based its case on interrogations of the two suspects, witness accounts and a long line of tapped telephone conversations, claimed to have proof the two men had been in contact with al-Shabaab leader Yassin Ismail Ahmed.

The recorded telephone conversations also showed that Mohamed had attended an al-Shabaab training camp in Somalia and that he aimed to "return to Somalia and wanted to become a martyr," while Jama "was preparing for a future suicide mission," the charge sheet said.

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