VOA常速英语:Alleged Bomber in Sweden Traced to Britain

Swedish authorities believe a Swedish citizen living in Britain was the suicide bomber who died in one of two explosions Saturday in Stockholm.

The blast that killed the bomber in Stockholm December 12 was the first suicide attack in Sweden's history.

It followed an initial blast that destroyed a car about 15 minutes earlier.

Swedish authorities believe the man carried out both attacks, killing himself and wounding two others.

They identify him as Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived for the past 10 years in Britain.

Swedish police say the bomber was loaded with three types of bombs and probably planned to do much more damage.

Sweden's Chief Prosecutor Tomas Linstrand said the bomber may have made mistakes and detonated the bombs early.

He said if the streets had been more crowded, many more people might have died.

British authorities say Abdulwahab lived in  in Luton, north of London, with his wife and three children.

Investigators say he studied sports therapy at this British university until 2004.

And two years later he began attending a mosque in Luton.

"When he started coming to the mosque he was very friendly, very cheerful, very helpful - generally a nice character," said Farasat Latif, secretary at the Luton Islamic Center.

But Latif says already Abdulwahab's views were too radical.

"He started preaching ideas which we considered heretical and extremist. When we asked him to refrain from preaching these ideas in the mosque he refused, basically, and because of that we had to publicly rebut his ideas and thereafter he stormed out and we never saw him again," Latif said.

It's not the first time Luton, or Britain, has been at the center of a terror case.

Four suicide bombers killed 52 people in 2005 in an attack on London's transport system. The bombers had met in Luton before launching their attack.

And only last year a Britain-based Nigerian student, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, allegedly tried to blow up a U.S.- bound flight.

Robin Simcox from the Center for Social Cohesion in London says it is no surprise that the attack in Sweden has its own links to Britain.  "It seems as so often when a terrorist attack or attempted terrorist attack takes place in Europe, the links to Britain inevitably appear and it appears as if this is no exception," Simcox said.

But security experts say it's unlikely that Abdulwahab worked alone. Now investigators are trying to determine if he was part of a small Britain-based group or a much larger international organization like al-Qaida.