STOCKHOLM: Swedish prosecutors on Thursday sought the arrest a young Syrian man for killing Salwan Momika, who repeatedly burned copies of the Qur'an in 2023 and sparked outrage in the Muslim world.
Momika, an Iraqi Christian, was shot on January 29 in an apartment in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm. He died soon after in hospital.
“We have a clear picture of the sequence of events, and following extensive technical investigations and a review of the collected surveillance footage, we have requested that a person be remanded in custody,” senior prosecutor Rasmus Oman said in a statement.
Oman added that “at present, the whereabouts of the suspect are unknown.”
A court hearing will be held on Friday.
According to documents filed with the Sodertalje district court, the suspect was a 24-year-old Syrian man.
The prosecutor said the suspect “killed Salwan Momika by shooting him several times with a handgun,” adding that the murder had been extensively planned.
Five men were originally arrested just hours after the shooting but were all released two days later.
They were formally dismissed as suspects in March.
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.
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. There was no ruling on 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 in 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.”
Sweden seeks arrest of Qur’an burner’s suspected murderer
https://arab.news/8b9by
Sweden seeks arrest of Qur’an burner’s suspected murderer
- Momika, an Iraqi Christian, was shot on January 29 in an apartment in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm
- According to documents filed with the Sodertalje district court, the suspect was a 24-year-old Syrian man
Extremists kill 25 workers in northeastern Nigeria
- Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown terrorists, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose radical laws
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: Armed extremists in northeastern Nigeria killed dozens of people earlier this week in separate attacks targeting a construction site and a military installation, security officials said on Saturday.
Gunmen killed at least 25 construction workers during an ambush on Thursday in the town of Sabon Gari in Borno State, said a senior officer of the Borno State Police Command. Authorities in Nigeria often decline to publicly confirm death tolls in attacks, citing security concerns.
“It is a devastating loss, and the hallmarks point directly to Boko Haram insurgents who have long resisted developmental projects in these areas,” the police official said.
Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown terrorists, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose radical laws.
The insurgency now includes an offshoot of the Daesh group, known as ISWAP. It has spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors, including Niger, killing about 35,000 civilians and displacing more than 2 million people, according to the UN.
Abdurrahman Buni, a senior officer of the Civilian Joint Task Force, a volunteer vigilante group helping the military fight extremist groups and armed gangs, confirmed that at least 25 construction workers were killed during the Thursday attack.
Buni and the police officer said extremist fighters, backed by armed drones, had raided an army base in a separate attack in the same town hours earlier. The police officer said the dead were nine soldiers and two members of a civilian task force, while about 16 injured security personnel were evacuated for medical treatment following the heavy gunfire.
He said it was unclear if the base attack was carried out by Boko Haram or the rival ISWAP, both of which are active in the region.
Nigeria is in the grip of a complex security crisis, with an insurgency by militants in the northeast alongside a surge in kidnappings for ransom by gunmen across the northwest and north-central regions over the recent months.
Last month, the US launched airstrikes in northern Nigeria, targeting terrorists.
