Hans Linde and Alice Åström, who both represent the Left Party in the Riksdag, also want to explore why Sweden’s parliament failed to live up to its role as a check on the government.
The two are particularly troubled by the fact that the media, rather than a parliamentary inquiry, was responsible for recent revelations that Sweden’s former Social Democratic government knew that the United States was using Sweden as a transit country to transport terror suspects in 2005.
They cite information that the Swedish military carried out undercover surveillance of US government planes at Arlanda airport which confirmed that the planes were carrying detained terror suspects.
“In this situation, one could expect a strong protest from the Swedish government. But despite the revelation, the Swedish government never launched a formal protest against the United States,” write Linde and Åström in an opinion article published Friday in the Göteborgs-Posten newspaper.
The two also have lingering suspicions about Sweden’s cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the forced deportation of two men from Sweden to Egypt in 2001.
“It’s still unclear how many in the then-Social Democratic government knew of the deportations, but there is much to suggest that it was more than just foreign minister Anna Lindh who was involved in the mission,” they write.
The two believe there may be more incidents which have yet to come to light and believe that Sweden’s cooperation with the CIA may be more extensive than currently known.
The want the sitting government to create an independent commission which it hopes would force “all cards to be put on the table” so that “we can put an end to this stain on modern Swedish history”.
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