Published: Less than 30 min ago
The police’s surveillance of far-right politician Rasmus Paludan’s election meetings has so far cost over SEK 43 million, reports Sweden’s Radio Ekot.
This year, the police have spent more than SEK 43.5 million on surveillance of the Danish-Swedish politician, leader of the far-right party Stram Kurs.
For example, the police effort in connection with the so-called Easter riots in Sveaparken in Örebro, where 71 police officers were injured, cost around SEK 800,000. When Paludan returned after some time, the police had changed tactics and staffed up with, among other things, police horses, a helicopter and a borrowed water cannon. The bill then landed at SEK 2.2 million, says Ekot.
But the efforts have also forced the police to re-prioritize, which has gone beyond ordinary activities as, among other things, crime prevention work has had to take a back seat, according to the radio.
The riots started during the Easter weekend in connection with the fact that Rasmus Paludan wanted to burn Islam’s holy book, the Koran, during his election tour in Sweden.
Paludan visited, or announced that he would visit, Linköping, Norrköping, Örebro, Landskrona, Malmö and the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, which was followed by violent riots with vandalism and violence mainly directed at the police.
During the summer, eight men were sentenced for the riots in Sveaparken in Örebro, with a prison sentence of between two and six years.