IT WAS a new location, but a familiar script. Just before 3pm on the afternoon of April 7th, afternoon strollers on Drottninggatan, a shopping street in Stockholm, scattered and fled before a lorry attempting to mow them down. The lorry eventually smashed into the front of a department store, and the driver escaped; the company that owned the vehicle announced that it had been stolen earlier that day. Four people were killed and 15 wounded in what was presumed to be a case of jihadist terrorism. The attack echoed those in Nice last July, when a man driving a hijacked lorry killed 86 people at a fireworks display, and in London in March, when a man drove his car onto the pavement at Westminster bridge, killing four pedestrians, before killing a policeman with a knife.
Swedish authorities reacted quickly, shutting down the public transit system, emptying shopping malls and searching major facilities such as the central train station. Commuters streamed out of the city centre, trying to get home on foot. Civil society showed its strength: within hours, citizens launched an initiative called OpenStockholm, inviting those stranded by the transit shutdown to come over for...
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