Sweden is singled out as a haven for Turkish terrorists. At the same time, Turkey harbors grossly criminal Swedes who, beyond the reach of the Swedish police, order murders and explosions on Swedish soil.
Prosecutors are fighting to get them extradited – but purchased passports are stopping them.
In the past year, Swedish government representatives have done everything to appease the prickly and capricious Turkish president, who guards the gate to NATO.
Erdogan has called Sweden a cradle of terrorism and demanded mass extraditions and stricter legislation. From the Swedish side, it has been all the more quiet about the fact that suspected murderers and gang leaders from Sweden live in freedom in Turkey – where purchased citizenship means that they are not extradited to Sweden.
The Ministry of Justice’s unit for criminal cases and international legal cooperation (Birs) currently has nine ongoing cases where Swedish suspects have been requested to be extradited from Turkey.
In addition, according to information in several media, there are a number of other Swedes who are suspected of crimes who are hiding in Turkey but who have not been requested to be extradited. According to DN, there may be as many as 30 Swedish criminals in Turkey.
Suspected of girl murder
One of them is believed to be the so-called “Kurdish fox”, a 37-year-old gang leader who, according to the police, is a central player in the wave of violence that has plagued Stockholm since the turn of the year. Another is a 25-year-old man who is suspected of involvement in the murder of 12-year-old Adriana.
A common step in the hunt for criminal suspects who are absconding abroad is international arrest warrants through Interpol and Europol.
– This means that there are pings when you travel across national borders and that you might then be arrested by the police on the spot. After that, Sweden can come in with a request for extradition within a certain period, says Cecilia Johansson, subject advisor at Birs.
Another option, if you know where a person is, is to contact that country directly with a request to arrest the person.
The “Kurdish fox” was requested to be extradited as early as spring 2022, but Turkey refused – according to the prosecutor in the case, Henrik Söderman, with reference to the fact that he had shortly before become a Turkish citizen.
Golden passport
Turkey, which does not extradite Turkish citizens, offers citizenship in exchange for investments of the equivalent of just over 4 million kroner, so-called “golden passports”. Authorities in several European countries have learned that this is how criminals buy their freedom in Turkey.
A third option to get around this is the so-called transfer of prosecution, which means that Sweden asks Turkey to file charges in a Turkish court. Henrik Söderman said at the beginning of the year that such a request had been considered in the case of the “Kurdish fox”, but that no decision had been made.
– Sooner or later you have to go in and decide whether to do it or not. It sounds like something will happen now on the purely diplomatic front, and then we’ll see where we end up there, but it’s nothing that’s relevant right now, he tells TT.
“Discussions”
When Sweden, Finland and Turkey signed a trilateral memorandum last summer, they agreed, among other things, to strengthen cooperation within the judiciary and intelligence services to counter organized crime.
If and how the agreement affected the cooperation with Turkish authorities linked to Swedish criminals who maintain themselves in the country, Cecilia Johansson says she cannot answer.
– What I can say is that there have been meetings at official level during this year where we have discussed ongoing matters.
FACTS Agreement between Sweden and Turkey
In the summer of 2022, Sweden, Finland and Turkey entered into a trilateral agreement which, among other things, involves deepened cooperation to fight terrorism and organized crime.
The agreement states that the countries must provide full support to each other in terms of “threats to their national security”. According to the agreement, the countries must establish joint “dialogue and cooperation at all government levels, including between the judiciary and intelligence services, to strengthen cooperation against counter-terrorism, organized crime and other common challenges”.
In the bilateral agreement that Sweden and Turkey entered into at the beginning of the week in connection with President Erdogan promising to admit Sweden into NATO, it states, among other things, that Sweden and Turkey have agreed to continue their cooperation under the trilateral agreement as well as under a new bilateral agreement the countries between.
Source: NATO
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