The Swedish security police seem to be trying to play down the attempted hijacking incident, at a “politically sensitive time.”

Margareta Linderoth, a Sapo official responsible for several departments including the one handling international terrorism, denied that police believed the arrested man was planning to attack an embassy or that four more men were being sought.

“I have never heard that the man has planned to do what you say he has,” she told Reuters. “We are not looking for four other men.”

Linderoth told Swedish radio that the suspect had taken flying lessons in the United States but had not completed his training. It was possible he had qualified since then, she said.

Another Sapo source told Reuters the security police were working on the theory that the group were planning to crash at least one plane, and possibly more, into a U.S. embassy. They did not know which embassy had been targeted.

An LGF reader emailed us with many details we haven’t read elsewhere; following are his translations from Aftonbladet articles.

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Following Reuters’ earlier report quoting a security official from SÄPO confirming Chatty’s intention to crash the plane into a US Embassy, the SÄPO Security Service’s Head of Counter-Terrorism, Margareta Linderoth denies that the agency has any such information, in an interview with Swedish radio.

- “The suspect has not made the kind of confessions regarding any intention to crash into a US Embassy that Reuters is reporting”, she said.

The Counter-Terrorism chief created an uproar in Sweden last year, when she said she could “understand Swedish Muslims who go to training camps in Afghanistan, as they are merely fighting for what they believe in”.

Asked to confirm statements from British police to the effect that British anti-terrorism expertise had been sent to Sweden to assist in the investigations of the hijacking attempt, Mrs. Linderoth denied, saying the Scotland Yard was not needed.

- “We’re handling this ourselves”.

Link.

Despite Mrs. Linderoth’s sudden retractions, American embassies in Europe were put on alert, and French media highlighted the fact that Kerim Chatty had close links to the Shoe-Bomber, Richard Reid. Both are members of the puritan Islamic so-called Salafi Movement ( the doctrine of which the 9/11 hijackers, the notorious British Islamic group Al Mujahiroun and the arrested European al-Qaida suspects also adhered to).

Meanwhile, John Trautman of the North American Institute of Aviation (NAIA) revealed to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Kerim Chatty had been a student at the South Carolina Conway Flight School (1700 Airport Road in Conway, South Carolina) between September 1996 and June of 1997.

He was training to become a pilot of smaller planes, but NAIA says it is probable he is able to command bigger aircraft as well.

Link.
Link.

Involved with the Yugoslav mafia in Stockholm, working with Dragan Joksovic who was murdered in 1998, Kerim Chatty was armed like a small army. In 1998, police found automatic weapons, silencers and machine guns in his car.

Kerim Chatty’s friends say he became deeply religious in recent years and stopped drinking, went to the Stockholm mosque and let his beard grow.

Checked by highway police in 1999, he told the officers he had stopped making trouble, and had committed to praying five times a day.

In 2000, the once amateur actor considered emigrating to Saudi-Arabia or Yemen to study.

Directly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, he traveled on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Link.

(In the link above, see image of battered American marine, and murdered mafia colleague.)