Mehdi Ghezali - Early Life and Travel

Early Life and Travel

Mehdi Ghezali was born in Botkyrka, Stockholm, on 5 July 1979 and grew up in Örebro, the son of an Algerian immigrant and a Finnish woman. He finished secondary studies in 1999 and trained as a welder. He was suspected of theft the same year, but left the country and could not be questioned by the Swedish police. When police officers visited Ghezali's father he stated that Ghezali had left for Algeria in order to complete his military service; however, Ghezali had traveled to Portugal, supposedly to pursue a career as a football player. Ghezali was apprehended by the Portuguese police in the Algarve region of Portugal on 31 July 1999 for a suspected bank robbery and a jewelry theft together with his partner Stavros Christos Toilos. The bank robbery in Albufeira netted 600,000 euros while the jewelry theft in Playe de la Galé netted 5,000 euros. Ghezali and his partner were released from prison on 12 June 2000 after having spent 10 months in a Portuguese prison without being charged, and returned to Sweden.

Ghezali then traveled to Medina in Saudi Arabia to study at the university. However, he was not accepted and returned to Sweden in March or April 2001 for a brief period before travelling to London where he studied at the madrasah of the Muslim cleric Omar Bakri. He then travelled to Pakistan in the summer of 2001 in order to study at one of the madrasahs situated there. After failing to gain acceptance into any of the madrasahs he then travelled to Afghanistan, where he according to his own statements stayed with a family in Jalalabad. Ghezali stated that: "I lived a simple life, playing with the children and seeing how Afghans lived." "Sweden's security police chief, Jan Danielsson, described Ghezali more as a confused youth traveling the world looking for spiritual fulfillment rather than a terrorist. 'We have no information that indicates he's an al-Qaeda member, much less that he held a leading position,' Danielsson said in an interview."