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
Venezuela swears in 5,600 troops after US military build-up
- American forces have carried out deadly strikes on more than 20 vessels, killing at least 87
CARACAS: The Venezuelan army swore in 5,600 soldiers on Saturday, as the United States cranks up military pressure on the oil-producing country.
President Nicolas Maduro has called for stepped-up military recruitment after the United States deployed a fleet of warships and the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean under the pretext of combating drug trafficking.
American forces have carried out deadly strikes on more than 20 vessels, killing at least 87.
Washington has accused Maduro of leading the alleged “Cartel of the Suns,” which it declared a terrorist organization last month.
Maduro asserts the American deployment aims to overthrow him and seize the country’s oil reserves.
“Under no circumstances will we allow an invasion by an imperialist force,” Col. Gabriel Rendon said Saturday during a ceremony at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex, in Caracas.
According to official figures, Venezuela has around 200,000 troops and an additional 200,000 police officers.
A former opposition governor died in prison on Saturday where he had been detained on charges of terrorism and incitement, a rights group said.
Alfredo Diaz was at least the sixth opposition member to die in prison since November 2024.
They had been arrested following protests sparked by last July’s disputed election, when Maduro claimed a third term despite accusations of fraud.
The protests resulted in 28 deaths and around 2,400 arrests, with nearly 2,000 people released since then.
Diaz, governor of Nueva Esparta from 2017 to 2021, “had been imprisoned and held in isolation for a year; only one visit from his daughter was allowed,” said Alfredo Romero, director of the NGO Foro Penal, which defends political prisoners.
The group says there are at least 887 political prisoners in Venezuela.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado condemned the deaths of political prisoners in Venezuela during “post-electoral repression.”
“The circumstances of these deaths — which include denial of medical care, inhumane conditions, isolation, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment — reveal a sustained pattern of state repression,” Machado said in a joint statement with Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition candidate she believes won the election.
