Stockholm bomber denounced by father-in-law

In a letter to The Associated Press and other media, Ali Thwany yesterday said his daughter Mona was not aware that her husband, Taimour Abdulwahab, was plotting an attack, though she grew suspicious of his frequent travels.

"We announce our dissociation with him," Thwany wrote. "All that happened is a personal matter connected to a rogue person bent on crimes and disillusioned by an unknown group."

Abdulwahab killed himself and injured two people on last Saturday when some of the bombs he was wearing exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers in downtown Stockholm.

Police suspect the explosives went off by mistake near a pedestrian street, and that he had planned to detonate them in a place where they would inflict more damage like a shopping center or train station.

In an audio message sent to the Swedish security service and the TT news agency before the explosion, Abdulwahab referred to Swedish troops in Afghanistan and a Swedish artist's drawing of the Prophet Muhammad which angered Muslims.

Abdulwahab also apologized to his family for misleading them, saying "I never went to the Middle East to work or to make money, I went for jihad." As a child, Abdulwahab and his family left Iraq for Sweden in the early 1990s but he spent much of the past decade in Britain, where he lived with his wife and three young children.

In the letter, written in Arabic, Thwany said Abdulwahab had betrayed Sweden, "which gave us home and treated us well and offered us things that others, Arabs, non-Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims, refrained from doing."

According to a resume posted online, Thwany is a 53-year-old Iraqi-born architect, who lives in a suburb of Stockholm. He did not immediately return calls seeking comment, but sent his letter by e-mail to the AP.

Referring to Abdulwahab as "Taimour the terrorist," Thwany said his daughter didn't know about his activities.

"She did not know anything about her criminal husband's movements," Thwany wrote, adding he felt no sorrow over Abdulwahab's death.

"On the contrary. I consider his end favorable to my daughter, who got her freedom and was saved from being brainwashed," he said. Muslim leaders in Sweden condemned the attack during Friday prayers.