Koran profanator Salwan Momika, who had sparked anger demonstrations in Muslim countries in 2023, was killed by bullets in the suburbs of Stockholm, Swedish media said on Thursday, January 30, the police confirming one dead by bullets on Wednesday evening.
A Stockholm court was due to rendered its judgment Thursday on the accusations of incentive to ethnic hatred against it. He said he postponed his decision to February 3 “following confirmation of the death of Salwan Momika”.
Police explained in a statement that they were called for shots by bullets on Wednesday evening in a building in Sodustalje, in the suburbs of Stockholm, where this Iraqi of Christian confession lived. Upon her arrival in the building, she found “a man touched by bullets who was taken to the hospital”, before indicating later that he was dead and that a murder investigation had been opened. As part of this investigation, “the police arrested five people overnight. The prosecution placed them in arrest,” she said on her website.
According to several media, Salwan Momika was live on social networks and his murder may have been filmed.
Tensions with the Middle East
In August, Salwan Momika, as well as his alter ego Salwan Najem, were returned to judgment for “Rutting against an ethnic group” four times during the summer of 2023. According to the indictment, the duo profaned The Koran, including burning it while making derogatory comments on Muslims – in a case outside a Stockholm mosque.
Relations between Sweden and several countries in the Middle East deteriorated in the summer of 2003 due to the actions of these two men. In July 2023, Iraqi demonstrators stormed the Sweden Embassy in Baghdad twice, triggering the second time from fires in the embassy.
In August of the same year, the Swedish intelligence service Sapo noted its level of threat to four on a scale of five, the fires of the Koran having made the country a “priority target”. The Swedish government condemned profanations while recalling that freedom of expression and meeting was protected by the Constitution.
In October 2023, a Swedish court recognized a man guilty of ethnic hatred incentive for burning the Koran in 2020, the first conviction of this type. Previously, justice believed that such a gesture was protected by freedom of expression, but since then, it can also be considered as “agitation against an ethnic group”.