Amid ongoing violent criminal gang conflicts, the Swedish government has announced it will create a new explosives registry, as criminal gangs continue to engage in bombings against their rivals, including two such bombings that occurred only this week.
Sweden’s Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer was part of an emergency meeting on Wednesday, September 27th, and later stated that the government would look to act swiftly to counter the bombing trend, broadcaster SVT reports.
Sweden’s prime minister has summoned the head of the armed forces to help curb a surge in gang killings.
The two men and the country’s police chief will meet on Friday to discuss what role the military could play.
It comes after a bloody 12 hours that saw two men shot dead in Stockholm and a 25-year-old woman killed in a blast at home in a town north of the capital.
“We will hunt the gangs down and we will defeat them,” PM Ulf Kristersson promised in a rare televised address.
September has become the worst month for shooting deaths in Sweden since records began in 2016, after two people died in separate shootings on Wednesday night, bringing the monthly total to 11.
Another person died on Thursday morning after a bomb blast.
The country has been rocked by a deadly wave of shootings and explosions in recent weeks – many suspected to be linked to a split within the Foxtrot gang.
Gang conflict in Sweden has claimed its youngest victim so far. A 13-year-old boy was found dead in a forest in the Swedish municipality of Haninge on Monday, September 11th. His death is said to be linked to Sweden’s ongoing gang conflicts which have exploded in scope as gang members and their families are now being targeted for assassination.
The body of the young teen was discovered in a wooded area near a railway track after he had been reported missing, according to a report from the newspaper Expressen, which also claims he had ties to criminal gang networks.
STOCKHOLM — Swedish police on Sunday arrested two people and detained around 10 people after a violent riot broke out at a protest involving a burning of the Quran, police said.
The protest was organized by Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika, whose protests — which have included public desecrations of the Muslim holy book — have sparked outrage across the Middle East.
Sunday’s protest was held in a square in the southern city of Malmo, which has a large immigrant population, and according to public broadcaster SVT around 200 people had showed up to watch.
A scene that delights the heart of every Muslim. ☪
After a copy of the Qur'an was burned, thousands of Muslims came together in Malmö, Sweden, holding copies of the Holy Book and engaging in a collective group reading. pic.twitter.com/EPtebVigHo
— MEND Community (@mendcommunity) July 12, 2023
Bomb squad experts were called in after Sweden was rocked by four explosions in just over an hour amid a surge in gang-related violence.
At just after 1.00am local time (2300 GMT), police in Gothenburg received reports of two explosions at addresses 10 minutes apart.
Officers said both sites were cordoned off while technical investigations were conducted and the national bomb squad had been called to the scene.
Please remember to donate to Blazingcatfur’s fundraiser
Police in Stockholm are investigating an incident that reportedly saw Nikeisha Andersson, a Swedish film director who happens to be a lesbian, abused verbally and assaulted by a Muslim taxi driver who had been driving her home.
In the interconnected, digital world of the 21st-century, an event thousands of miles away can send shockwaves felt in other parts of the world. The recent burning of a Quran in Sweden has had reverberations as far away as Pakistan and a special impact on the already defenceless Christian minority there.
This is not the first time Pakistani Christians have experienced societal prejudice, institutional discrimination, and sporadic violence. These issues are frequently exacerbated whenever similar events take place anywhere in the West. The fallout from the Quran’s desecration in Sweden, however, has intensified these conflicts, resulting in an alarming rise in threats and the defilement of Christian symbols, particularly the Cross, symbolising Christianity.
Residents in the Stockholm suburb of Husby have started taking the law into their own hands after law enforcement, despite pleas from locals, has done little to alleviate problems with migrant crime.
Husby, northwest of Stockholm, is one of many areas across Sweden that are considered “vulnerable” due to high unemployment and high rates of crime, with a 2017 report claiming there were as many as 61 “no-go areas”, with 23 of them considered “particularly vulnerable.”
Sweden has seen several protests involving the burning of the Quran over the last few years but recent burnings and desecrations of the Muslim holy book have fuelled increasing tension between Sweden and countries in the Muslim world.
The Swedish Security Police Säpo, which is responsible for counter-terrorism operations and other espionage operations, is now warning that Sweden has become a priority target for Islamic radicals looking to carry out acts of terror.
The diplomatic fallout over the burning of the Quran outside a mosque in Sweden is threatening to escalate into a trade war after calls from Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa came to boycott Swedish products.
Last month, a 37-year-old Iraqi refugee who wants the book banned tore out pages from the Quran and set them alight outside of Stockholm’s central mosque. A key point of contention is the fact that the protest was given the go-ahead by a Swedish court.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden’s prime minister said Thursday that police have received several permit applications for the burning of religious texts in the country next week, and that he fears this may escalate tensions further with the Muslim world.
In his first public comments since the start of the Quran burning crisis that has severely strained Stockholm’s ties with Muslim nations, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told Swedish news agency TT he was “extremely concerned” about a new wave of desecrations.
Our national self-image as a safe, caring country is starting to unravel.
Some years ago, a news report in my local paper in Sweden went viral. Headlined ‘Piece of paper on fire in Nässjö’, it ran as follows: ‘A piece of paper that lay on the ground was burning in central Nässjö last Friday night. Someone had lit the piece of paper and left it on the ground. The burning paper was found and put out by a person living in a house nearby.’
Thousands of people took part in protests across Muslim majority nations on Friday after a second incident in Sweden involving the desecration of the Qur’an.
The episode left the Swedish government apologetic and fearing that the outrage in the Middle East may delay Turkey lifting its veto on Sweden’s membership of Nato.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had said at the Nato summit in Vilnius that he would recommend the Turkish parliament ratify Sweden’s application, ending Turkey’s year-long veto, but on returning from a trip from the Gulf he merely said Turkish ratification was contingent on the steps taken by Sweden.
Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee who burned Quran 2 weeks ago, has burned another copy of Quran today.
Salwan has also burned the Iraqi flag.
He tore up the Quran and then burned it.
His protests are due to his belief that the Quran promotes terrorism 🤷🏼♀️
pic.twitter.com/0vjXRdhIVj— Ashlea Simon (@AshleaSimonBF) July 20, 2023
Protesters in Baghdad stormed the Swedish embassy and set it afire on Wednesday in response to Sweden’s approval of a permit to protest in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm. It was expected that a Quran would be burned at the protest after another Quran burning incident in late June.
The protesters were followers of Iraq’s radical anti-Western cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who is retired from politics but still wields vast influence over Shiite Muslims.
Hundreds of people stormed Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad, Iraq and burned it down yesterday after another Quran was burnt in Sweden.
Sweden’s NATO membership still hasn’t been ratified by Turkey.
The turmoil is putting the membership in danger. pic.twitter.com/ebDBpwpGrI
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 20, 2023
