It was on the night of July 20 that hundreds of protesters, outraged by the summer’s Koran burnings in Sweden, forcibly entered the Swedish embassy in Iraq. The storming lasted for about 15 minutes before security forces arrived at the scene. By then the protesters had time to set fire to the building.
The staff who were at the embassy were forced to flee in connection with the storming and have since been relocated to Stockholm for security reasons.
18 people are sentenced
Now Iraqi police officers are held responsible for the incident. A total of 18 people were sentenced on Tuesday to prison, reports the news agency AFP with reference to the Iraqi security service. The length of the sentence is said to vary between 18 months and 3 years.
According to AFP, the sentence must have been handed down in an internal court linked to the Iraqi security service. However, the news agency has obtained a document in which the court states that the convicts “failed to fulfill their duty by allowing protesters to attack the embassy”.