The Salafist terrorist group Islamic State (IS) is reported to have gained a new international leader named Abdulkadir Mumin.
Mumin, who previously lived in Gothenburg for many years, is said to have been radicalized and brought into contact with militant Islamists through his frequent visits to the city’s Saudi-funded mosque.
– He is the most important person, the most powerful one, he is the one controlling the global Islamic State network, analyst Tore Hamming of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization told AFP.
How and why Mumin came to Sweden or why he was granted a residence permit has not been made public, but between 1990 and 2003 he lived in the suburb of Hjällbo with his wife and daughter.
The Somali then moved on to the UK, where he worked as an Islamist agitator and preacher – both in the country’s mosques and through lectures and monologues published online.
In 2010, he returned to Somalia and eventually became a leader of the terrorist group al-Shabaab and then the supreme leader of ISIS in Somalia.
“The spider in the web”
In recent years, many of the Islamic State’s leaders have been killed by the US and its allies, allowing the former Gothenburg resident to climb the internal hierarchy and now effectively control the terrorist network.
– He is one of IS’s top leaders… Mumin is not a caliph, but he is the operational spider in the web of IS’s provinces – including those in Syria and Africa, and IS Khorasan in Afghanistan. The latter has launched several terrorist plans in Europe, says terrorism researcher Magnus Ranstorp in an interview with TT.
Ranstorp further emphasizes that it was precisely in Sweden and through the Bellevue Mosque in Gothenburg that Mumin was radicalized and got to know other Islamists with links to terrorist groups such as IS, Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab.
Säpo does not want to comment
However, the Swedish Security Service does not want to comment on the case and claims that it does not answer any questions about individuals.
“In general, we can say that for the Security Service it is not interesting whether an opinion in itself is extreme or radical… Our task is to assess and intervene against a person’s intention and ability to commit crimes”, they write in a comment to TT.
In May 2024, it was initially reported that Moomin had been killed in a US airstrike, but this information could not be verified afterwards.
