KUWAIT: Following up on the recent incident in which citizen Abdul Aziz Al-Shamlan deliberately ran over a group of policemen, killing one of them and injuring others, security sources said Shamlan was a member of the Islamic State terrorist group. They said his passport had been withdrawn from him and he was banned from travelling last year following an investigation at the state security department, as he was preparing to leave Kuwait to join IS in Syria.

The sources added that the suspect admitted to running over the policemen on purpose with the intention of killing them all. He added that he had planned for the operation a week earlier and that two days before the incident, he explored several checkpoints stationed along Gulf Road and selected the one near Dasman Palace because it was far from the crowds along the Gulf Road and he could easily make an escape.

The sources explained that Shamlan left his house after Asr prayers and drove by the spot several times to make sure the largest number of policemen had gathered there. He added that the national celebrations had caused him a great deal of embarrassment with radical and terrorist clerics abroad, who kept needling him about it, which made him decide to spoil the ceremonies. Shamlan also confessed to planning to flee the country after committing the crime. He kept repeating that he had wished all the policemen at the checkpoint had died. "If I can go back in time, I would do it again more precisely," he allegedly said.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi