Sweden 2023

04/01/2023: Nathan Benoitzon aka Bherlin Gildo, one of the first group of Jihadist veterans from Sweden to travel to the Syrian battlefield in October 2012 has been sentenced by Blekinge District Court to four months in prison for crimes against International Law. His trial began on September 9, 2022. During his stay in Syria, he posted pictures and videos on both his private Facebook page and on a page belonging to the Jihadist group Kataib al Muhajedin, from where many later joined IS. On one of the pictures, he made a victory gesture while looking into the camera. He denied any wrongdoings and claimed that he had never fought in Syria and that in the group he was with, he only cooked food and carried out guard duties. Acording to his testimony, his presence on the pictures is merely inadvertent. (Source)

09/01/2023: The Solna District Court sentenced, in a historic verdict, Jihadist returnee Camilla Olofsson and Abdirahman Shukri Mohamed to prison for several crimes committed in Iraq and Syria. The convicted man comes from Järva and has on two occasions married one of Olofsson's daughters when she was under 15 years old. He has repeatedly committed serious rape against children between 2013 and 2015 with particular recklessness and brutality. Mohaled is sentenced to eight years and ten months in prison. Olofsson wanted the daughters to comply with the norms that apply within the terrorist organization and exploit them for sexual purposes. She was sentenced to six years and ten months in prison yet her defense lawyer stated that the verdict will be appealed. However the Svea Court of Appeal upheld the verdict against Mohamed on May 16, 2023. (Source)

19/01/2023: Swedish authorities have submitted a legislative proposal to adapt counter-terrorism efforts and comply with the EU Regulation on combating the dissemination of terrorist content online that has been in force since June 7, 2022. Henceforth, Swedish Police Authority shall be granted more effective tools to prevent the spread of terrorist content on the internet without impacting material protected by the Freedom of the Press Ordinance or the Freedom of Expression Act. The new Law gives the Police Authority the opportunity to decide on fines and sanctions against online hosting service providers that do not fulfill their obligations under the regulation. This may, for example, involve failing to remove terrorist content. In those cases, the Police Authority can decide on sanctions, with a minimum of SEK 5,000 and a maximum of SEK five million. There are also exceptions in the most serious cases in which case a sanction fee can be decided that corresponds to four percent of the provider's total turnover. The bills also contain a provision that makes it easier for the Police Authority and the Security Service to exchange information with each other. As such, the Police Authority shall now have access to the data that may be needed to assess possible terrorist content. The law is proposed to enter into force on July 1, 2023. (Source)

01/02/2023: Since Far-Right activist Rasmus Paludan has burned a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Copenhagen on January 21, 2023, Sweden was violently targeted by a slander campaign throughout the Muslim world, to such extent that Säpo stated that Sweden is being identified as a "legitimate target" for terrorist attacks although the terrorist threat level has not been raised at this stage. Sweden is depicted as one of the most islamophobic countries through a very spiteful narrative mixing victimhood and vindictiveness. According to the Psychological Defense Agency, this hate speech is something that Sweden will have to live with for a long time to come and even though the threat level remins unchanged, trivial events may sufficiently trigger potential lone actors who would resort to terrorist acts and ultimately usher in a greater cycle of violence. (Source)

02/02/2023: Back in November 2022, Swedish authorities have amended the Constitution to restrict freedom of association in order to comply with Türkiye's demands to enhance Sweden counter-terrorism apparatus as a prerequisite to accept Sweden's NATO membership. Consequently, Swedish Government announced a new legislative proposal to enforce special criminal liability for anyone who participates in the activities of a terrorist organization in a way that is intended to promote, strengthen or support the terrorist organization. It is also proposed to make it a criminal offense to finance participation in a terrorist organization, to publicly encourage and recruit to commit the crime, and to travel abroad with the intention of committing the crime. The proposed penalty is imprisonment for a maximum of four years. If the crime is serious, the proposed penalty is imprisonment for a minimum of two and a maximum of eight years. If the perpetrator led the terrorist organization, the proposed penalty is imprisonment for a fixed term, a minimum of two and a maximum of eighteen years, or life imprisonment. In principle, all forms of support to a terrorist organization, regardless of whether it involves material assistance or assistance in the form of participation in the activities, contribute to maintaining and strengthening the organization and thereby its ability to commit terrorist crimes. The legislative amendments are proposed to enter into force on June 1, 2023. (Source)

22/02/2023: Swedish authorities have published the Swedish Security Service’s 2022–2023 situational assessment report which is an update of the previous Swedish Security Service Yearbook 2021. Although the report acknowledges that somehow, the threat posed by Islamism and the Far-Right have increased, considering the context of escalation on the European margins due to war in Ukraine, Russia is explicitly pointed out as the most significant threat to Sweden alongside China and Iran to a lesser extent. (Source)

12/03/2023: The pro-IS media channel, Al-Adiyat Foundation, released a poster in Arabic, French and English urging Muslims to commit bloodshed against Swedish people as revenge to the burning of a Quran by Far-Right activist Rasmus Paludan in January 2023. The IS statement also directly targets former Prime Minister Stefan Löffen, who is falsely reported to be Sweden's current Prime Minister and referred to as "little slave of the Cross" who allegedly has declared war on Islam and shown hatred for the prophet by allowing Qurans to be burned. An explicit reference to Samuel Paty, the French History teacher who was decapitated in October 2020, was made in the threat made against Löffen. (Source)

29/03/2023: The Gothenburg District Court sentenced a 35-year-old woman to three months of prison for uploading photos of dead and mutilated bodies in the then capital of so-called IS Caliphate, Raqqa, in 2014 on her Facebook account. The pictures were taken at the Al-Naim roundabout where public executions carried out by IS often took place. She left Sweden for Syria in 2012 claiming to pay a visit to her brother but did not return because she was concerned by the local situation or so she claims. She initially was part of the smaller group Jaish Al Muhajireen, which fell under IS leadership, and married an IS militant who died in battle. She returned to Sweden in 2017 and self-proclaimed to be a witch on social media and made a living partly by selling magic spells on the Internet while being prosecuted. The Court found her guilty of war crimes yet she denied having attended executions and claims that she regrets her past actions and that she was brainwashed. (Source)

04/04/2023: Swedish intelligence reported the arrest of five people suspected of preparing a “terrorist act” in Sweden in retaliation for the burning of a Quran by Rasmus Paludan, a right-wing extremist two months earlier as an act of denunciation of Swedish negotiations with Türkiye on NATO adhesion. The terrorist project reportedly has international ties to violent Islamist extremism. (Source)

28/06/2023: Sweden was exposed to criticism following the public burning of a Quran in front of Stockholm Mosque by an Iraki national named Salwan Momika who came to Sweden from Iraq in 2018 and received a three-year residence permit in 2021. He became before long the focus and target of radical Muslims locally and abroad openly calling for his execution. In July 2023 during a demonstration, he was aproached by a woman who threatened to expel him to Iraq and Iran where he will be hanged and decapitated accordingly. The woman was identified as “Zainab Sattar”, she is already known in Sweden for having sexually blackmailed the moderate MP Kjell Jansson. (Source)

Ali Khamenei, Supreme Guide of Iran, has posted on X messages urging Muslims to eliminate Momika and also called Swedish authorities to hand him over to Muslim countries and subtly threatened Sweden by claiming that, by supporting Momika, the country declared war to Islam and called upon itself the wrath of every Muslim nations.

27/07/2023: Säpo chief Charlotte von Essen says during her press conference that Sweden has gone from being a mere target to a priority for Islamist terrorism. In reaction to this confession of the deteriorating security landscape in Sweden, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson declared that the Government is giving 15 agencies the task of strengthening Sweden's protection against terrorism through closer cooperation. This initiative from Swedish authorities was praised by terrorism expert Hans Brun who stated that intelligence transfer between authorities is necessary when threats against Sweden may come from state actors, violent extremism, terrorism, organized crime or a mix of several different actors. (Source)

17/08/2023: The Swedish security police, Säpo, is raising its threat assessment from level three to level four particularly due to the threat of extremist Islamic terrorism. In the aftermath of the Quran burnings, the threat to Sweden has gradually increased throughout the year yet Säpo estimates that the situation has deteriorated for a long time and Sweden has been the target of various campaigns that have portrayed it as anti-Islam. (Source)

The Kata'ib al-Iman Foundation, a media channel affiliated with Al-Qaeda, released a video on Telegram that contains violent threats against targets in Sweden with a emphasis on police forces that Muslims are urged to massacre as revenge for the Quran burnings by Salwan Momika. The video ends with praising the Kouachi brothers who took part in the Charlie Hebdo massacre back in January 2015, and Abdullakh Anzorov who killed Samuel Paty in October 2020. (Source)

14/09/2023: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula made threats against France, and Sweden in the latest issue of its magazine Sada al-Malahim, targeting “a ministry” in Paris and “a Swedish embassy”. This organization had previously claimed responsibility for the January 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo and referred to the Quran burnings that took place in Sweden: “It is now clearly apparent that Sweden has chosen to take the lead in the war against Islam and Muslims among the countries of the European Union, thus competing with France, Denmark and others for the first place in the race of opposition to God and his Messenger". (Source: Défense et sécurité internationale ; Contre-terrorisme du 16/08/23 au 15/10/23 ; 168 ; 2023 ; pp.12-13)

Similar threats against Sweden were already made by Al-Qaeda on August 15, 2023 after the burning of a Quran in Copenhagen. (Source)

07/10/2023: Following Hamas' terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, a Palestinian teacher at Jensens SFI in Stockholm published and republished posts on her X accounts praising the attack that killed more than 1,400 people, in gruesome terms such as “This is a taste of what it will feel like when we liberate Palestine” or compared “Zionists” to Nazis and accused them of being worse than the Nazis. The teacher was born in Gaza first came to Sweden in the summer of 2012 after receiving a visa for just over a month. In 2013, she also went to Sweden after applying for and being granted a temporary visa for just under a month in June. While in Sweden, she applied for and was granted a residence permit until the end of August. On August 12, the teacher then applied for a permanent residence permit. This was granted the following year, in May 2014. In 2017, she applied for citizenship and it was granted, as stated by the Swedish Tax Agency, in 2020. It is also implied that she was a member of the Left Party yet Chief Staff Kalle Larsson did not confirm this alleged membership and stated that the Left Party does not share her views on Islamist and Hamas terrorist violence. (Source)

16/10/2023: Two Swedish football supporters were shot dead and another injured by a man armed with a AR-155 rifle in Brussels during a match opposing Belgium and Sweden. The shooter was identified as Abdesalem L., a Tunisian man who previously was a member of the Tunisian Jihadist organization Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia and broke out of prison in 2011 before heading to Europe where he sought asylum in four countries. His presence in Belgium was illegal and he was supposed to be deported as his asylum application was rejected yet the process was delayed due to administrative flaws. He proudly posted on his Facebook account a video of himself bragging about what he did and claimed to have acted "to avenge the Muslims", implying that he did so out of retaliation for the Quran burnings that Sweden did not want to condemn. Belgian forces chased him throughout the night and although he successfully escaped at some point, he was ultimately recognised the day after at a bar and eliminated. IS took credit of this attack through its media Amaq. (Source: Défense et sécurité internationale ; Contre-terrorisme du 16/10/23 au 15/12/23 ; 169 ; 2024 ; pp.12-13)

This attack against Swedish civilians abroad is also connected to the tense context created by the infamous October 7, 2023 terrorist attack carried out by Hamas in Israel and the latter's retaliations in Gaza that set this part of the Middle East ablaze, the resulting war overspilled to the European public opinion which in turn got extremely polarized over this matter. Swedish terrorism expert, Magnus Ranstorp, stated that this polarization and the general terrorist threat has increased indeed considering that the image of Sweden is extremely negative and extreme Islamists hold Sweden as a spearhead in the war against Islam. This Islamist depiction of Sweden was strengthened with the Quran burnings and through the following slander campaign in several Muslim countries against the Swedish societal and social systems that contradict with Muslim values. (Source)

19/10/2023: Swedish public opinion was shocked by the revelations of Expressen media which published the investigation conducted by journalist Daniel Olsson regarding the 83 Swedes who joined IS territory and ultimately returned to Sweden: "More than one in four returnees have found employment with children, young people and vulnerable people as childminders, youth workers, teachers or social workers". Swedish Education Minister Lotta Edholm reacted immediately after the publication and declared that "it is completely unacceptable that IS terrorists are working in the Swedish school system, in leisure centres, etc. This should not happen [...] Swedish society, especially schools, have been too naive about returnees from the terrorist state IS. Information about these people is of course available at Säpo. It is clear that this information must also reach schools in one way or another". According to her, the management of these schools should step up their efforts in checking the backgrounds of those hired. "It is the employer's responsibility to take references, for example, and to have control over what a person has done before being hired. In these cases, it has clearly failed". In several cases, IS returnees were employed shortly after their return from Syria, where they remained for several years within the terrorist organization. (Source)

28/11/2023: The Swedish School Inspectorate reported that the Cordoba International School in the Kista district of Stockholm had to close as investigations conducted by Säpo stated that several employees and people in management positions had been in contact with violent Islamists. One person on the board of one of the group’s associations had allegedly previously worked for an Islamist terrorist organisation abroad. As pupils of two kindergarten were exposed to risks of radicalization, the Cordoba International School ultimately had its permit withdrawn. (Source)