Suicide bomber challenged at his mosque for being extreme

The suicide bomber who killed himself in a terrorist attack in Sweden was denounced at his local Luton mosque for being too extreme, it was revealed this afternoon.

Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly, 29, was censured by chairman of the mosque Qadeer Baksh for preaching radical extremism at the Luton Islamic Centre near his family home.

Farasat Latif, secretary of the Islamic Centre, said Abdaly had been warned his preaching was not representative of Islam and that he should stop immediately. He said: "The chairman stood up and refuted everything he was claiming. He stormed out, and we never saw him again.

"He was saying things like we should rise up against Muslim leaders, and revolutionary ideas like that."

It also emerged today that he sent a hate-filled audio message minutes before he let off a car bomb and detonated an explosive device strapped to his chest, killing himself and injuring two others in Stockholm on Saturday.

In his warning, Abdaly said that "children, daughters, brothers and sisters" would all die and that the "oppression" of Muslims would not be tolerated.

He vanished from his home in Luton about three weeks ago, where he had been living with his wife Mona Thwany, 28, and their three young children — two daughters born in 2004 and 2006, and a son born this year.

Armed officers raided his home late last night and his wife was taken away with their children.

Mrs Thwany, who runs her own beauty business, Amira Make-up and Hair, claimed her husband had not told her what he was planning. When asked if she had been aware of the plot, she said: "No, of course not. I really don't want to talk right now. I am very devastated and upset." Abdaly moved to Luton in 2001, studying sports therapy at the University of Bedfordshire until his graduation in 2004.

Sweden's prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand said that Abdaly was intending to target a major department store or the city's railway station. Mr Lindstrand also revealed that he was carrying explosives strapped to his body and in a backpack, as well as a "pressure cooker" type device. Abdaly said in his message "our actions will speak for themselves" as he sought revenge for Sweden's support for the war in Afghanistan and the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by a Swedish artist.