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SWEDEN AND IRAQ

Iraqi police officers jailed for failing to protect Swedish embassy

An Iraqi court gave 18 police officers jail sentences of up to three years for failing to stop protesters storming and torching Sweden's embassy in Baghdad, security officials said.

Published: 13 September 2023 06:46 CEST

Iraqi police officers jailed for failing to protect Swedish embassy

Protesters threw stones during clashes with security forces in front of the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on July 20th. Photo: AP Photo/Hadi Mizban

Supporters of the powerful Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr set the Swedish embassy in Baghdad alight on the night of July 20th, after a Stockholm-based Iraqi refugee desecrated the Quran in Stockholm.

The internal security forces court in Baghdad on Tuesday found 18 police officers guilty of failing to carry out their duties by allowing the protesters to attack the embassy, said a copy of the verdict seen by AFP.

Eight police received three-year jail terms, seven got two years and three months and three others were sentenced to 18 months in prison according to the text authenticated by an interior ministry official who attended the hearing.

Some of the police involved in the case were permanently disbarred from the force, according to the verdict.

The officers, who included members of the diplomatic protection forces, can appeal the ruling.

The desecration of the Quran, which happened repeatedly in Sweden and Denmark this summer, sparked tensions between the Scandinavian countries and Muslim nations in the Middle East.

Iraq retaliated against Stockholm for permitting protests in which the Quran was desecrated by announcing the expulsion of the Sweden’s ambassador.

Swedish authorities had allowed the demonstrations on free-speech grounds, but said giving their permission did not signal any approval of the action taken in the protests.

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Malmö police urge calm ahead of Quran burning in run-up to Eurovision

The protest, which is set to be held in central Malmö on the afternoon of May 3rd, has been granted permission by police to go ahead.

“We can’t reject [the permit]. Police have been criticised when we have rejected permits in various ways. There have been court decisions and we look at each case very thoroughly. But every situation is unique,” senior police officer Per Engström told the TT newswire.

“This is a call for everyone in the area to let it pass. The purpose is to cause offence and upset, but we’re telling the public to try to keep calm,” he added.

EXPLAINED:

When does a Quran burning qualify as a hate crime?

Several other, separate, protests are also expected to go ahead in Malmö in the coming week, both in support and in protest of the European Broadcasting Union’s decision to let Israel participate in the song contest despite the brutal war with Hamas in Gaza.

Israel has warned its citizens not to visit Malmö during the week of Eurovision.

Quran burnings have become a hot topic in Sweden in recent years, including sparking fury in several Muslim countries which even put Sweden’s Nato application at risk. In Malmö, which has a large Muslim population, similar incidents have sparked riots on some occasions.

Police have little power to prevent protests featuring Quran burnings due to Sweden’s strong freedom of speech laws.

That’s not to say that setting a religious text on fire could never be prosecuted under hate crime laws (it all depends on context, as this court case shows), but Swedish law says that the police are only allowed to refuse a permit for a demonstration if it is “necessary to do so with respect to public order or safety at the gathering or, as a direct consequence of the gathering, in its immediate surroundings”.

This means that they cannot refuse a permit even if somebody says they are going to do something illegal, as long as it doesn’t endanger anyone.

Another application for a demonstration permit from the same people, a man and a woman, to walk through Malmö on Saturday while carrying Israeli flags and pulling a copy of the Quran on a leash has been denied by police. That’s because two people going for a walk through the city does not qualify as a public gathering and therefore does not need a formal permit.

A third application to burn a copy of the Quran in Rosengård, an immigrant-heavy area of Malmö, on Sunday is still being processed by police and hasn’t yet received a decision.

Updated to add the last two paragraphs

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