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Investigators Probe Stockholm Suicide Bomber

DON GONYEA, Host:

Greetings, Philip.

PHILIP REEVES: Good morning.

GONYEA: So why are the police carrying out this search in Britain?

REEVES: Well, the man thought's to have been a 29-year-old Swede of Iraqi origin who studied in England. A man called Taimour Abdulwahab. Reports, which aren't officially confirmed, say that the man studied sports therapy at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton and that he continued living in the town until recently, and still has a wife and two young daughters there.

GONYEA: And broadly speaking, what is the focus of this investigation?

REEVES: So the focus is on whether an Islamist organization, including possibly al- Qaida, played some sort of role in this. If so, did this man leave, in Luton, any evidence that might led police to arrest and find other members of the group who might be planning to strike again.

GONYEA: Again, you're in Stockholm, what impact are you noticing as far as the effect of these attacks on Sweden, on the people there?

REEVES: So there are some here who say this was an event that was inevitable in the long run. Yet, Swedes tend to see their country, you know, as a prosperous, stable, tolerant, peaceful place - a place that produces diplomats that mediate the problems of other countries. And there's a feeling among the people I've spoken to, that this sort of thing shouldn't and doesn't happen here.

GONYEA: And is there any sense of how these attacks might affect attitudes within Sweden to that country's immigrant population?

REEVES: The Islamic association in Sweden here acted pretty quickly after these attacks to try to head off this, by issuing a statement condemning the attacks as a threat to peace within Sweden.

GONYEA: All right, Philip. Thank you.

REEVES: You're welcome.

GONYEA: This is NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Philip Reeves is an award-winning international correspondent covering South America. Previously, he served as NPR's correspondent covering Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.
You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.
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