Police request detention for five suspects in Finland attack

Four Moroccan nationals are under investigation as well as the attacker who killed two people and injured eight people on Friday.

A policeman keeps watch at Market Square in Turku, Finland, after several people were stabbed there on August 18, 2017.
Reuters

A policeman keeps watch at Market Square in Turku, Finland, after several people were stabbed there on August 18, 2017.

Finnish police on Monday requested that all five people arrested after a man went on a stabbing rampage last week should be held in pre-trial detention.

The main suspect, 18-year-old Moroccan asylum seeker Abderrahman Mechkah, is being investigated for two cases of murder with terrorist intent and eight attempted murders with terrorist intent, the police said.

Four other Moroccans, who deny involvement, are suspected of taking part in the attacks.

The National Bureau of Investigation said it had organized a reconstruction of Friday's knife rampage in the western city of Turku and raided addresses in its Runosmaki district.

"The investigation is proceeding and the picture is getting more accurate," said Detective Chief Inspector Crista Granroth, who is in charge of the investigation.

An 18-year-old Moroccan asylum seeker was arrested on charges of killing two women in a knife rampage and wounding eight other people - six of them women - in Turku's main market square.

The rampage was halted when police shot the attacker in the leg. He was interviewed under guard in a hospital in Turku, a city on Finland's Baltic coast 160 kilometres (100 miles) west of the capital Helsinki.

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