Next image. BACKGROUND.
Eden took over.
‘As you all know, Zakaria Khelifi was the subject of a case in which the court ruled last week. The prosecutor was aiming for a conviction on the grounds of preparing to commit an act of terrorism, but Khelifi was acquitted and released.’
The head of department, who was sitting next to Eden and was obviously her boss, coughed discreetly. Eden went on, ‘However, in the case involving Khelifi, we did manage to secure convictions on the same charge for two other North African nationals. We were able to prove that they had spent the months before their arrest preparing a major attack which was to be directed at the Swedish parliament. We found an explosive device that was virtually complete, and the means to make at least two more. We believe that the attack was to be carried out during the key debate on immigration and integration, which has been talked about for such a long time but has not yet taken place.’
‘Tomorrow,’ the Minister said. ‘It’s scheduled for tomorrow morning.’
Fredrika went cold all over whenever the immigration-and-integration debate was mentioned. It was something that no one really wanted, apart from those who were racists. Had the debate been the target of the two men who had just been convicted? If that was the case, then they must have been ready and waiting for the most perfect and most spectacular opportunity to strike, because the debate had only been under discussion for a few weeks.
‘We think the two men were acting alone. All of our intelligence points in that direction, and we see no reason to revise that assessment. Therefore, we have not raised the question of increased security in the parliament building; that includes tomorrow’s debate. Apart from what had been planned already, of course. We have liaised with our colleagues in the police, and they have put rigorous security measures in place in order to ensure that the debate can proceed peacefully.’
Of course, Fredrika thought. Even when you were using the fabric of democracy in order to try to abolish it, you had the support of the forces of law and order.
The head of department interrupted Eden’s presentation.
‘The successful outcome in court with regard to the two men was very welcome, as far as we are concerned. It was important for Säpo to be able to avert a terrorist attack. We are told all too often that we do too little or too much, too early or too late.’
Fredrika understood what he was talking about. When Säpo took a case to court but failed to secure a conviction, they were often heavily criticised, particularly in those instances when an arrest didn’t even lead to prosecution. She had often reflected on the delicate balancing act the Swedish security services had to maintain, and she had wondered whether she herself would have been able to carry out such a thankless task.
Then came Drottninggatan, and the wind changed. Those same journalists who had often claimed that the security services sometimes overstepped the mark now thought that far too little was being done. The man who blew himself up on Drottninggatan had been on Facebook, for God’s sake, so why hadn’t Säpo known about him?
Who wants a society where Säpo monitors everyone on Facebook? Fredrika had asked herself. Quite a lot of people, apparently.
Eden carried on talking. Fredrika wondered what the head of analysis was there for. To carry the laptop around, perhaps?
‘The two perpetrators who were convicted last week were acting alone, but we have identified several collaborators close to them,’ Eden said. ‘Zakaria Khelifi is one of those collaborators.’
She pointed to the picture of Zakaria on the screen.
‘He was the only one on whom we had sufficient evidence for an arrest and prosecution.’
The Minister for Justice tilted his head to one side.
‘I think we should regard it as a positive point that it takes a considerable amount of evidence to secure a conviction, in other crimes as well as terrorism.’
‘Of course.’
Silence.
‘Zakaria Khelifi,’ Eden said. ‘That’s why we’re here.’
Everyone was listening.
4 13:12
‘Zakaria Khelifi came to Sweden from Algeria in 2008. He was an asylum seeker, and claimed that he was being persecuted by a notorious family because he had been seeing the daughter of the family, and had happened to get her pregnant before they married. According to Zakaria, his wife had been murdered by her own relatives.
‘During the spring, we received several indications suggesting that further groups were planning terrorist attacks on targets in Sweden, and that these attacks were connected with similar cases in other European countries. We felt that it was possible to take this information seriously in only one of the Swedish cases.’
New image: three small photographs of men whom Fredrika recognised from the media – the two men who had been convicted in court, and Zakaria Khelifi who had been acquitted.
‘To begin with, there was no sign of Zakaria Khelifi in our investigation, but then he started to be seen more and more often in the company of the main suspects. On one occasion, thanks to telephone surveillance, we heard one of the men say, “You can go and pick up the item we talked about yesterday,” at which point, Khelifi went and collected a package containing substances that we were later able to establish were part of the explosive device constructed by the main suspects.’
‘Zakaria Khelifi said in court that he didn’t know what the package contained,’ the Secretary of State added.
‘Indeed he did, but, in the surveillance footage, he seemed very nervous when he went into the shop to collect it. He looked around several times while he was carrying it to his car, and he was dripping with sweat by the time he got in and drove away. We should also mention that, under interrogation, one of the main suspects named Khelifi as one of their collaborators.’
‘A statement which Ellis later retracted, I believe?’ the Minister for Justice said.
‘Yes, and that surprised us. Before the trial began, he had been very clear in his description of Khelifi’s role, insisting that Khelifi had been a great help. We have no idea why Ellis backtracked when the prosecutor questioned him, to be honest. We’ve tried to find out whether he was threatened in some way, but he refuses to answer our questions. He just keeps saying that he mixed up different names and different people and, unfortunately, said the wrong thing. But none of us believes that. Ellis was telling the truth during the interrogation, and he lied in court.’
The Minister listened in silence as Eden carried on talking.
‘It turns out that this wasn’t the first time Khelifi had been associated with individuals suspected of terrorist crimes. We have subsequently discovered that he came up during a preliminary investigation back in 2009, the year he was given a residence permit. We were following up on a number of people that we suspected of financing terrorist activity overseas but, unfortunately, we had to drop the case as we were unable to prove that a crime had been committed.’
New image.
Fredrika and the others looked at it attentively.
‘We found Khelifi’s contact details through secret phone surveillance – mapping phone traffic. There were several numbers that we were unable to identify, but one of them later turned out to belong to Khelifi. We then noticed that Khelifi’s number also cropped up in connection with another operation that we had launched after the terrorist threats in France earlier this year.’
The Minister for Justice looked troubled. ‘He was involved in those as well?’
‘We don’t know for sure. But we do know that before the attack, he had been in contact with one of the perpetrators who was convicted in the French courts last spring. Although, at that time, we had yet to realise who the phone number belonged to, as I said.’