STOCKHOLM: A Swedish court on Thursday sentenced a radicalised Uzbek asylum seeker to life in prison for terrorism after he mowed down pedestrians with a stolen truck in central Stockholm last year, killing five people.

The assault, which mirrored other truck attacks in 2016 that left scores dead in France, Germany and the UK, occurred as Sweden grappled with the aftermath of having taken in more migrants per capita than any other country in Europe.

Arrested hours after the April 7, 2017 attack, Rakhmat Akilov, 40, who swore allegiance to the militant Islamic State (IS) group on the eve of his assault, told the court during his trial that IS members had given him the green light on encrypted chat sites to carry out a suicide attack in the Swedish capital. However, the jihadist organisation never claimed responsibility for the assault.

The Stockholm district court convicted Akilov of “terrorist crimes” for five murders and 119 attempted murders in one of Stockholm’s busiest shopping streets. Three Swedes, including a girl who would have turned 12 on Thursday, as well as a 41-year-old British man and a 31-year-old Belgian woman were killed. Ten more were injured.

During his almost three-month trial, Akilov, who confessed almost immediately to the attack, expressed no remorse. His gaze often remained empty, even when photographs and footage of the bloody attack were projected onto a large screen in the courtroom. “He acted with the direct intention to kill as many people as possible,” the court said in its verdict, adding Akilov would be expelled after serving the life term, which averages 16 years in Sweden.

After swerving wildly to hit as many people as possible, Akilov’s rampage ended when the truck smashed into the facade of a large department store.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2018