Aamulehti has some background on the gunman who carried out the shootings at the shopping mall in Espoo, Finland, today:
The suspect, Ibrahim Shkupolli (born 1966) is a Kosovo Albanian who according to Aamulehti's information came to Finland via Norway in 1990. He was placed in the reception center at Mikkeli [Eastern Finland], which he later left to live in Espoo, Finland.
In the early 1990s he already had a Finnish girlfriend who is one of the victims of the Sello tragedy. Aamulehti understands that Shkupolli later separated from this girlfriend and married an Albanian woman. He also had children in common with her. The whole family lives in Finland.
The suspect's wife and child as well as his parents and brother live in Finland.
So far, unconfirmed reports suggest a triangle as the background to the shootings. Shkupolli may have been driven by jealousy of his former, Finnish girlfriend's new life.
4 comments:
Absolutely tragic. By this time, the new has spread all world round. Yes, Nordic newspapers agree in the information Aamulehti posted about the gunman. A great debate seems on the horizon for weapon regulation in Finland. Interesting this article on Aftenposten http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article3444732.ece
It will be interesting on follow this issue.
Yes, it will be interesting - though it seems that this particular gunman had been in trouble with the Finnish police before, for illegal possession of firearms and on other related charges, so maybe this incident is not quite relevant to that debate. However, it's a fact that Finland has a very high percentage of private legal gun-owners - gun-owning is a tradition connected not only with sporting and hunting interests, but also with personal and national security. There's a very large and temperamental armed neighbour directly to the east, after all...
Yes David, and though Finland has always had one of the highest rates of gun owning in the whole world, no incidents like this had happened in the years before. Some explain it as an influence from the media, specially from the USA, but I don´t know if it is that quite simple. The presence of a militar superpower has played its role indeed, and the Finnish people has been always a people under constant siege and threat, but anyway, as long as there are weapons and the means to easily get it, the possibility of a new incident will remain on the air. So, the whole society will have to make a decision.
Post a Comment