Stockholm truck attack suspect confesses to a "terrorist crime"

Rakhmat Akilov, who has been in custody since the truck attack in the Swedish capital on Friday, has confessed to being responsible for the crime, Reuters reports.The 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan admitted responsibility for a "terrorist crime" at a custody hearing on Tuesday morning.The truck attack, which hit Stockholm on Friday afternoon, left four people dead and injured 15 more.Akilov was arrested just hours after the attack.Two of those killed were Swedish, one was a British citizen, and the other from Belgium.Akilov drove the truck into the crowds on a busy shopping street in the middle of the capital before crashing it into the display window of a shopping centre."His position is that he admits to a terrorist crime and accepts therefore that he will be detained," Johan Eriksson, Akilov's lawyer said during a court hearing held to decide whether he should be kept in custody.Akilov entered the courtroom with a green sweater over his head and was seated between his lawyer and translator, according to Reuters.The Uzbek man had expressed sympathy for ISIS and was wanted for failing to comply with a deportation order, Swedish police said on Sunday, according toReuters. Police had been looking for him since he was given four weeks to leave the country in December, but security services did not view him as a militant threat.Akilov had asked for his state-appointed lawyer to be replaced by a Sunni Muslim lawyer as he said "only a lawyer of this faith couldassert his interests in the best way."A court denied his request"for lack of sufficient reasons," AFP reports.The attack bore some resemblance to other deadly terrorist attacks in Nice, Berlin, and London during which trucks and cars were used to plough through crowds of people. All those attacks were claimed by ISIS, but there has been no claim yet for the Stockholm assault.Join the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: People are outraged by this shocking video showing a passenger forcibly dragged off a United Airlines plane
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