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April 11 (UPI) -- A 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan on Tuesday confessed to a "terrorist crime" for driving a delivery truck through a crowd of people in Stockholm, killing four people, his lawyer said. Johan Eriksson, the lawyer for Rakhmat Akilov, said his client admitted his guilt during a court hearing.
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Swedish authorities remanded Akilov in custody after he admitted to carrying out the attack, court officials said. He appeared in court handcuffed, hooded and wearing green overalls, BBC News reported.
At least four people died and more than a dozen others were injured, including children, on Friday after a suspect drove a truck into a crowd of people in a busy Stockholm street and into a department store.
"His position is that he admits to a terrorist crime and accepts therefore that he will be detained," Eriksson said.
It is unclear to what "terrorist crime" Akilov admitted.
Swedish police said Akilov had "shown sympathies to extreme groups," including the Islamic State. Akilov was previously known to Swedish intelligence services.
Akilov on Monday requested his lawyer be replaced by a Sunni Muslim but that request was rejected, officials said.
In 2014, Akilov applied for Swedish residency but it was rejected in December, police spokesman Jan Evensson told reporters. In February, his case was handed to police to deport him after he failed to leave the country.
The Stockholm County Council said two Swedes, one Brit and one Belgian died in the attack. Fifteen others were injured, four critically. The truck used in the attack was owned by beer company that said it was hijacked during a delivery.
