STOCKHOLM: Five men arrested in Sweden over the killing of Salwan Momika, who repeatedly burned copies of the Qur’an in 2023, have been dismissed as suspects, a prosecutor said on Friday.
Momika, a 38-year-old Iraqi Christian whose actions sparked outrage in several Muslim countries, was shot on January 29 in an apartment in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm. He died soon after in hospital.
Momika was killed just hours before a Stockholm court was due to rule whether he and co-defendant Salwan Najem were guilty of inciting ethnic hatred.
According to daily Aftonbladet, police had placed Momika in a secret location ahead of the verdict for his protection and he was streaming an address live on TikTok when intruders burst in.
Five men were arrested just hours after the shooting but were all released two days later.
They were formally dismissed as suspects on Friday.
“We have a fairly good idea of how events unfolded but no-one is currently in custody or a formal suspect,” prosecutor Rasmus Oman said.
“We are working broadly and I can’t go into which leads we are following,” he added.
After Momika’s murder, the Stockholm court postponed its ruling for several days.
It ultimately convicted 50-year-old Najem, also of Iraqi origin, of inciting ethnic hatred during four Qur’an burnings in 2023.
No ruling was pronounced for Momika.
Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s actions.
Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.
In August 2023, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of one to five, saying the Qur’an burnings had made the country a “prioritized target.”
Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch called Momika’s murder “a threat to our free democracy,” while Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said there was “a risk that there is also a link to a foreign power.”
Five suspects dismissed over Qur’an burner’s murder in Sweden
https://arab.news/v3e4h
Five suspects dismissed over Qur’an burner’s murder in Sweden
- Salwan Momika was shot on January 29 in an apartment in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm
- Five men were arrested just hours after the shooting but were all released two days later
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
