Swedish police said yesterday (Monday) that 26 members and 14 civilians were injured in recent days in violent clashes with demonstrators protesting planned meetings of a right-wing extremist movement that wanted to burn copies of the Koran.
“In some cases, this was tantamount to attempted murder, and in all cases there was a serious attack on law enforcement,” Swedish police chief Anders Thornberg told a press conference.
The official did not explain the severity of the injuries, but the local press confirmed that they were minor.
The first clashes took place in Linköping and Norrköping in the south, at the first two stops of the anti-immigration and anti-Islamic Straamcourse movement led by Rasmus Paludan, who has Danish and Swedish citizenship.
Baludan then headed to Urubro in the center, then to the outskirts of Stockholm, and finally to Malmö in the south, before announcing new Sunday meetings in Linköping and Norrköping, which he later canceled.
The police chief added at a press conference: “Criminal elements have taken advantage of the situation to use violence” and this has “nothing to do with demonstrations”, calling for the empowerment of the security forces. He added: “There are very few of us. Our numbers are growing, but not as fast as the problems within the community.”
Clashes erupted yesterday with police, during which cars were thrown with stones and burned, leading to the arrest of 26 people in Norrköping and Linköping. “About 200 participants practiced violence, and the police had to intervene with weapons in self-defense,” special operations officer Jonas Huizing said during a press conference. The police announced that three protesters were shot and killed during the incident, which they classified as a “riot”. In Malmö, where Rasmus Paludan burned the Quran on Saturday, the second school fire riot took place on Sunday night.
Rallies organized by a small extremist movement and the burning of copies of the Koran have sparked outrage in the Arab world. The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which called the charge d’affaires of the Swedish Embassy, considered the actions of the extremist movement “a provocation of the feelings of Muslims and a serious insult to their shrines.” On Monday, the Saudi Foreign Ministry expressed “condemnation of the actions of some extremists in Sweden to deliberately insult the Holy Quran, provocation and incitement against Muslims,” the official news agency said.
