The terror alert level in Sweden has been raised to “elevated” after rumours of Mumbai-style terror raids across Europe. The head of the Swedish Security Service (Sapo), Anders Danielsson, announced this week that the threat level has gone from two to three on the five point scale.
“This is a balanced assessment of the intention to commit a crime and the ability to commit crimes,” said Danielsson in a report by The Local.
The news has only just been made public despite the government being made aware of the decision to raise the level last month. Mr Danielsson has, however, called for people not to be alarmed.
“There is a specific threat in Sweden. But we are now at an elevated level which means that we have good control of the situation. We are saying that there is no immediate threat,” he said. “It is not today, it is not tomorrow, but further ahead than that,” he added.
The assessment is based on intelligence information about possible terrorist activities in Sweden. Danielsson declined to comment, however, about any possible locations or activities detected.
“We now need to reduce the threat, if we can. We can also conclude that we change the threat from gaining better knowledge of the situation. This is a complex issue. Theoretically we can change already next week,” he said.
The Security Service also declined to confirm if the increased threat level was in connection to recent warnings of terror attacks in Europe. According to reports, terrorist-trained Islamists are coming to European cities from camps in Pakistan with the intention of carrying out attacks, similar to the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.