The fact that the police do not classify the mass shooting as a terrorist act or call the suspected perpetrator of a terrorist have attracted criticism in social media.
At the same time, several experts agree with the current assessment, including the security expert and the teacher at the Swedish Defense College Jörgen Holmlund. He does not think that there is something that points to terrorist acts.
– I understand that many may feel that the severity is higher if you classify it as a terrorist crime, he says.
The investigation can decide
Jörgen Holmlund opens for new information in the investigation to get the police to change their assessment. For example, if the act proves to be justified by immigration hostility or performed in order to harm authorities.
– If he were to express this in social media, has recorded films or if you find paper at home where he expressed this, he says.
Mats Fridlund, associate professor of history of ideas and learning at the University of Gothenburg, who is researching terrorism, is on the same track. However, at the same time point out that school shootings usually do not have ideological motives, at least not mainly.
– It sometimes occurs, but then interwoven with other motifs. As the Columbine massacre 1999 where the perpetrators partly did it as a protest against bullying, says Fridlund.
The police self -critical
Niclas Hallgren, Deputy Regional Police Chief Bergslagen, admits that the Police Authority stated “a little too fast” when in a press release the day after the deed wrote: “Everything indicates that the perpetrator has acted alone without ideological motive”.
– I think it is too delimited, now in reflection. What we said from the beginning probably matches more, we found no factors that pointed to it then.
Hear more of Hallgren in the clip below.