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Sweden extradites suspected PKK terror group member to Turkey

Sweden has extradited a convicted member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to Turkey as Ankara presses Stockholm for further steps in return for its membership in NATO, state media reported on Saturday.

Published: 3 December 2022 14:12 CET

Istanbul airport

Mahmut Tat was taken by Turkish police soon after arriving at Istanbul airport and referred to court on Saturday. Photo by alevision.co / Unsplash

Mahmut Tat, who was sentenced to six years and 10 months in jail for PKK membership in Turkey, fled to Sweden in 2015 but his asylum request was rejected.

Tat arrived in Istanbul on Friday night having been detained by Swedish police, the Anadolu news agency reported.

He was taken by Turkish police soon after arriving at Istanbul airport and referred to court on Saturday, the private NTV broadcaster reported.

Turkey has accused Finland and Sweden in particular of providing a safe haven for outlawed Kurdish groups it deems “terrorists”, and held back on ratifying their NATO bids despite an agreement in Madrid in June.

NATO ambitions

Finland and Sweden dropped decades of military non-alignment and sought to join NATO in May, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The decision requires a consensus within the US-led defence alliance, but only Turkey and Hungary are yet to ratify their membership.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held trilateral talks with his Swedish and Finnish counterparts on the margins of a NATO meeting in Bucharest this week.

“The statements (coming out of Sweden) are good, the determination is good but we need to see concrete steps,” Cavusoglu said.

Ankara has said it expects Stockholm to take action on issues including the extradition of criminals and freezing of terror assets.

Member comments

Anonymous - 5 December 2022 at 10:27 CET

So this person had their asylu claim rejected in *2015* and was still in Sweden in *2022*?
How does that work?
Anonymous - 6 December 2022 at 13:56 CET

“Mahmut Tat, … fled to Sweden in 2015 but his asylum request was rejected”.

So, in what conditions he stayed in Sweden for 7 years and a denied asylum? Prison? Working? Benefits? Some clarity in the news would help.
Pingback: Anonymous

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What do we know so far about Sweden's police leaks?

What’s happened?

According to an investigative report by newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), multiple gang members have infiltrated the police force by, for example, dating police employees, or using family connections to gain access to sensitive information about ongoing cases.

The first article in DN’s series focuses on a woman the newspaper calls Elin, who met a man, Jonas (not his real name), on a dating app when she had one year left of her police education. She falls in love, but his only goal with the relationship is to get a source within the police force which he can use for access to secret information.

Over the course of four years until she was caught, she made multiple illegal searches in the police register for Jonas, his associates and enemies, as well as providing him with information on ongoing investigations against him.

Other cases investigated by the newspaper include a border guard who sold classified information to gangs, a police officer who leaked information to what DN describes as “one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals” and an investigator who was dating a man she was investigating, who she shared screenshots of sensitive information with.

In another case, the police received a tip-off that information was being leaked to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. It was discovered that a group of five alarm operators had made an unusually high number of searches for members of the Hells Angels, who were later discovered to have connections with the gang that they had lied about during their background checks.

What have the consequences of these leaks been?

In some cases, the leaks preceded revenge attacks on enemies of the gang member involved in the relationship. In other cases, the gang members’ enemies disappeared or were murdered.

Some of the people from the police force involved in the leaks were sentenced to fines for illegal data access or breaches of professional secrecy, while the evidence against others was not sufficient to prosecute.

At least 30 employees had for different reasons been considered “security risks” and either resigned or were forced to quit, the newspaper reported, with over 514 suspected leaks taking place from police to criminals since 2018.

How do criminals find police officers?

According to DN, they look for things that can be used as blackmail, like police officers who buy drugs, or set “honey traps”, like the one used against Elin, where they meet police officers or students on dating apps and start a relationship.

“You take Tinder, for example, and set your search radius so the police school is in the centre. When you get a match, it’s easy to check if it’s a student, through class lists or how they present themselves on social media. They’re proud of their line of work,” Jonas told DN.

They might also use their family connections to put pressure on relatives who work in the police force.

Why is this important?

It’s important because Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related violence in recent years, with a surge in shootings and bombings as gangs fight for control over different drug markets.

Swedes also have a high level of trust in the police force – 72 percent according to a 2024 study by Medieakademin, topping the list of state authorities, with a higher level of trust than universities, healthcare, the courts and even the Swedish church. This was five percent higher than in 2023.

Although the vast majority of police officers do not leak information to criminal networks, Sweden does not have a history of organised crime infiltrating the police force, so officials are keeping a close eye on these leaks to make sure they don’t become more common.

On April 29th, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told TT newswire that the leaks were “very serious”, potentially putting trust in the police force at risk.

“There are many great risks and one is that trust in police declines, that people get the idea that mafia-like methods are used to infiltrate law enforcement,” he said, before adding that he was unable to say whether it constituted a threat to national security or not purely based on the initial DN article.

“But the mere suspicion of these types of connections are damaging,” he told the newswire.

What happens now?

Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told DN that he planned to call a meeting with police leadership about the reports, which he described as “extremely serious”.

“[At that meeting] we will consider the need for further measures,” he said.

“Leaking sensitive information to criminals is against the law and can have very damaging consequences for the work of the police force,” Strömmer told DN, adding that it could undermine trust in the police and “damage democracy”.

Last summer, the government increased the penalty for breaching professional secrecy, and a special investigator was tasked with looking at a potential reform of the rules on corruption and professional misconduct in February – the Crime Prevention Council is also involved in that investigation, where it has been asked to provide information on how gangs use government employees.

“Protecting the integrity of the justice system against infiltration and other security threats is a central part of the new national strategy against organised crime that the government decided on earlier this year, and it is given the highest priority in our assignments to the authorities,” Strömmer told the newspaper.

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