STOCKHOLM: Swedish prosecutors on Wednesday charged a Swedish activist with inciting ethnic hatred by burning the holy Quran in 2022.
Rasmus Paludan has been convicted of racist abuse, provoked rioting in Sweden in 2022 and burned copies of the holy Quran publicly.
He was charged by the prosecutors with “agitation against an ethnic group” over a protest in Malmo city in April 2022 where he desecrated and burned the holy book of Muslims.
They also charged him over another incident where he made derogatory remarks about Muslims.
Paludan later started international controversy when he set fire holy Quran outside the embassy of Turkiye in the Swedish capital in January 2023. The incident strained ties between the countries at a time when Turkiye was holding up Sweden’s NATO bid.
Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern states were further strained by a row of protests staged by Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika. Iraqi protesters stormed the embassy of Sweden in Baghdad.
In August last year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after the holy Quran burnings. The Swedish government denounced the desecrations while noting the country’s constitutionally protected freedom of speech and law of assembly.
A Swedish court in October 2023 convicted a man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 holy Quran burning. The man convicted, published the video on social media platforms and placed the burnt holy Quran copy outside the mosque in the city of Linkoping.
