Arrested by Säpo in a raid • At risk of deportation to Russia • Suspected of terrorist crimes in another country
The man was arrested in his absence on Thursday, arrested on Friday and remanded in custody on Monday.
– The person is suspected of a terrorist crime in another country, says Fredrik Hultgren-Friberg, press secretary at the Security Police.
According to prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist, the man is suspected of terrorist crimes in another European country. However, the offense must not have been committed in the European country and a European arrest warrant has been issued.
Flee from Russia to Ukraine
The 41-year-old man comes from Russia and is said to have previously lived in the Russian region of Ingushetia in the North Caucasus, which borders Georgia and the Russian sub-republic of Chechnya, reports Radio Liberty.
According to the man, acquaintances should have tipped him off that the Russian security service, the FSB, was interested in him. Then he fled to Egypt and then settled on the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine.
When Russia annexed the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula in 2014, the man fled to other parts of Ukraine, before settling in Zaporizhzhya. There he was arrested in 2016 by the Ukrainian security service SBU, at the request of the FSB. He was released, however, the leader of the Crimean Tatars, Refat Chubarov, had then bailed for him.
Arrested by security but released
Russia has previously demanded that Ukraine extradite him and wanted him internationally on suspicion of participating in a terrorist organization. The 41-year-old then claimed that he was persecuted because of his religious affiliation.
According to Russia, he must have been part of the Islamist movement “Hizb ut-Tahrir”, which has been labeled a terrorist for several years in Russia.
Two years after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, it struck what it called a “cell of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Crimea”, which was said to have been “liquidated”, according to the Russian state news agency Ria Novisti.
Decision on deportation already made
The request to deport the man from Ukraine to Russia was criticized by several human rights activists, who said that his life was in danger and that he was at risk of torture.
When the 41-year-old came to Sweden is unclear and a process to extradite him has already begun. At the time of the arrest, he was already in the Swedish Migration Agency’s system and a decision on deportation had been made.
“The Swedish Migration Agency made a decision on deportation from 2024-08-12”, writes the agency’s press service.
The man’s lawyer Torben Setterlund states that his client denies any crime and does not want to make any other comments.