Politics Reports: Known Koran changer shot dead in Sweden

SDA

30.1.2025 - 12:22

Police officers during an operation in Södertälje, south of Stockholm. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT News Agency/AP/dpa - ATTENTION: For editorial use only and only with full attribution to the above credit
Police officers during an operation in Södertälje, south of Stockholm. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT News Agency/AP/dpa - ATTENTION: For editorial use only and only with full attribution to the above credit
Keystone

A man who plunged Sweden into a major diplomatic crisis with regular Koran burnings in the summer of 2023 has been shot dead, according to consistent media reports.

Keystone-SDA

The Iraqi-born man was found at night in his apartment in the town of Södertälje, southwest of Stockholm, with gunshot wounds to which he later succumbed. This was reported by the radio station SVT and the newspapers "Dagens Nyheter", "Aftonbladet" and "Expressen", among others.

According to the reports, the man was in the middle of a live broadcast on Tiktok at the time of the attack. According to the police, five people were arrested. In a statement, the police reported the incident in Södertälje, in which a man aged around 40 was shot and killed. However, a police spokeswoman initially refused to confirm the identity of the 38-year-old when asked.

However, a statement from the Stockholm district court indirectly indicates that the man is dead. A verdict on the Koran burnings was originally due to be published on Thursday. The court said in this context that now that the death of one of the two defendants has been established and the conviction of a dead man is not possible, the verdict must be adjusted and postponed. The second defendant has already commented on social media and wrote that he is alive.

Diplomatic crisis in the middle of the NATO trial

The man had come to Sweden from Iraq in 2018. In the summer of 2023, copies of the Koran were repeatedly set on fire or damaged in public in the Scandinavian country. The Iraqi, who was critical of Islam, was responsible for most of these incidents together with a colleague. In the midst of Sweden's bumpy NATO accession process, all of this led to a diplomatic crisis and sometimes violent protests in Muslim-majority countries.