NEW YORK — The Moroccan teenager accused of carrying out Finland’s first jihadi terrorist attack had been flagged months ago for extremist views and had been denied asylum, authorities in Finland announced Monday.
Abderrahman Mechkah, 18, stabbed two people to death and injured half a dozen others in the center of Turku, a city of about 180,000, on Friday afternoon, according to police. Police shot and injured him.
Authorities are treating the case as an act of terrorism targeting women. Mechkah is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning via a video link from the hospital where he is being treated.
The German Interior Ministry said that Mechkah passed through Germany in late 2015 and early 2016, evidently as part of the record wave of people fleeing poverty and violence and seeking refuge in Western Europe. He later stayed at a processing center for asylum-seekers in the Pansio area of Turku.
Paivi Nerg, an official at the Finnish Interior Ministry, confirmed that Mechkah had been denied asylum, although the reason was not immediately clear.
In France on Monday, police said they were not looking at terrorism as a motive after a van rammed into two bus stops in the port city of Marseille, killing one person and injuring another.
The driver of the van, arrested in a third location, was a 35-year-old from the Grenoble region in eastern France who was being treated for psychological problems, a Marseille police official said.
The collisions at the bus stops about 3 miles apart came days after back-to-back van attacks in Barcelona and the Spanish resort town of Cambrils killed 15 people.
Police in southwestern Finland got a tip at the beginning of this year about Mechkah, saying he was “radicalized and interested in extremist thinking,’’ according to Jyri Rantala, a spokesman for the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, or SUPO.
The tip was passed on to the intelligence service but was not given priority because there was no reference to a specific threat, Rantala said.
Mechkah will face two charges of murder and several counts of attempted murder with terrorist intent. Four other Moroccans living in Finland will also face charges of involvement in the attack.
