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OFFBEAT

Bank robber in custody following ‘religious awakening’

Police in western Sweden may soon be able to close their files on a daring four-year old bank robbery after one of the thieves experienced a religious salvation during his time on the run.

It was back in 2005 when men on mopeds attacked two guards and made their way into the Sparbanken Gripen in Ängelholm.

The assailants then sped off on their motorbikes with several million kronor from the bank’s vaults.

Three months after the caper, an arrest warrant was issued for a 30-year-old man suspected of carrying out the daring heist.

But police ran into a number of roadblocks during the investigation’s early phases, and by 2008 it looked as if the crime would remain unsolved, the Helsingborgs Dagblad (HD) newspaper reports.

But police caught a lucky break last year when the 30-year-old suspect unexpectedly contacted Sweden’s embassy in Brazil, confessed to the theft, and then asked to return to Sweden to atone for his crime.

He later explained that he had had fallen in love with a Brazilian woman following the robbery. The couple then moved to Brazil, where the 30-year-old began studying religion.

“He had studied with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which caused him to reassess his life. Now he sees that he must follow the country’s laws in order to be a Jehovah’s Witness and as a result wants to pay for his crime,” the 30-year-old’s defence attorney, Niclas Elison, told the newspaper.

The extradition process has taken a year, but on Monday the man stood before the Helsingborg District Court and listened as a judge ordered him remanded into custody.

While the robbery is more or less solved, authorities are still working to recover the 2 million kronor ($288,000) taken in the heist.

They are also hoping the 30-year-old man will help them locate his accomplices in the crime, despite his reluctance to do so.

“He’s willing to confess to his part of the crime, but isn’t willing to speak about any accomplices or about the money,” said Elison.

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RELIGION

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

The Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious educational institution, Al-Azhar in Egypt, has called for the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products after far-right activists destroyed Korans in those countries.

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

Al-Azhar, in a statement issued on Wednesday, called on “Muslims to boycott Dutch and Swedish products”.

It also urged “an appropriate response from the governments of these two countries” which it charged were “protecting despicable and barbaric crimes in the name of ‘freedom of expression'”.

Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan on Saturday set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in front of Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm, raising tensions as Sweden courts Ankara over its bid to join Nato.

EXPLAINED:

The following day, Edwin Wagensveld, who heads the Dutch chapter of the German anti-Islam group Pegida, tore pages out of the Koran during a one-man protest outside parliament.

Images on social media also showed him walking on the torn pages of the holy book.

The desecration of the Koran sparked strong protests from Ankara and furious demonstrations in several capitals of the Muslim world including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the Koran burning, expressing “deep concern at the recurrence of such events and the recent Islamophobic escalation in a certain number of European countries”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful”, while the United States called it “repugnant”.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Turkey and Sweden”.

On Tuesday, Turkey postponed Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Stockholm for allowing weekend protests that included the burning of the Koran.

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