Tranas, Sweden - During his teenage years, Taimour Abdulwahab embraced his Western lifestyle with relish.
With an attractive girl on either arm, the Iraqi-born youth was often spotted drinking beer in his favourite bars near his family’s new home in Tranas, south-east Sweden.
He was always immaculately turned out and his hair was usually styled in the latest Western fashion. Unlike many Muslims, he had no interest in religion and even dated a Jewish girl when he was at college.
In fact, his regular visits to nightclubs began to worry his parents, who feared he was having “too much of a good time” and was neglecting his studies.
After leaving Holavedskolan college at the age of 19 he travelled to Britain to study sports therapy in Luton.
Years of radicalisation then followed before the terrorist returned to Sweden eight years later a “changed man”, say friends.
Swedish prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand said on Monday that authorities are certain the suicide bomber who terrified pre-Christmas shoppers was Abdulwahab. He said Abdulwahab was completely unknown to Swedish security police before the blasts, which killed the bomber and injured two others.
“When he came back he had grown a beard and he was very serious,” one said.
“He talked about Afghanistan and religion and did not want to hang out with his friends. His parents were worried about him but they thought he was just going through a phase.”
Another friend, known only as Khaled, said Abdulwahab had a “real edge” to him when he returned.
“We used to hang out together, drink together and play practical jokes together,” he said. “They were good times.
“I remember him as a college student chasing girls and drinking beer. But when he came back in 2007 he was a changed man. He worked with me in a plastics factory for five months, but then he announced that he was going back to London, saying that this town was too small and boring for him.
“There was a real edge to him which I didn’t like. He had changed. He had grown a beard and started to pray and was not very happy.
“He was very serious and didn’t want to do the normal things that young men do. He told me that something had happened when he was in Luton. I am sure of this. Someone had taken advantage of him and had brainwashed him.”
Abdulwahab had fled to Sweden from Baghdad when he was 10 with his parents and older sister Tamara, now 33.
After initially struggling to adapt, he thrived in his new life once he joined secondary school. He specialised in science at college and gained “better than average” grades. Headteacher Sture Brolin described him as a “quiet student” who was popular and fitted in well at the college.
“He liked basketball and he liked to hang out with his friends. He was polite and well mannered and so it is very hard for us to understand what happened to him.”
After he returned to Sweden from Britain in 2007 his family and friends tried to help him out of the “rut” they thought he was in.
A friend of the bomber’s father Thamer, who asked to remain anonymous, said Abdulwahab had become depressed during his time in Britain.
“It is easy to see now that it would have been easy to radicalise him because of his depression,” he said. “He was a ripe target because he was in a new country without his friends and family.” - Daily Mail