On 7 April 2017, in central Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, a hijacked lorry was deliberately driven into crowds along Drottninggatan (Queen Street) before being crashed through a corner of an Åhléns department store. Five people were killed and 14 others were seriously injured.Police considered the attack an act of terrorism. Rakhmat Akilov, a 39-year-old rejected asylum seeker born in the Soviet Union and a citizen of Uzbekistan, was apprehended the same day, suspected on probable cause of terrorist crimes through murder (a Swedish legal term). Swedish police said he has expressed sympathy with extremist organizations, among them the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Uzbek authorities said he had allegedly joined ISIL before the attack. According to the head prosecutor, Akilov had sworn his allegiance to the Islamic State in a self-recorded video the day before the attack. Akilov admitted to carrying out the attack at a pre-trial hearing on 11 April.On 30 January 2018, Rakhmat Akilov was formally charged. The leading prosecutor in the case is Hans Ihrman, who submitted the indictment to the Stockholm District Court.
