Five individuals, who Swedish authorities say have “international ties to violent Islamist extremism,” were arrested on Tuesday, April 4th during anti-terror police raids across the country.
The raids took place in the early morning hours in the towns of Eskiltuna and Strängnäs, west of the capital, and Linköping, south of Stockholm, and followed an extensive intelligence-gathering operation by the Swedish Security Service Säpo, the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter reports.
Commenting on the anti-terror raids, Susanna Trehörning, the deputy director of counterterrorism at Säpo, told reporters:
Everything has gone smoothly. Various objects have been seized and will be confiscated, it is still partly ongoing. At the moment, these five are the suspects, but as always in investigative activities, we will try to find out if there are more, even if that is not something that we are currently planning for.
“The current case is one of several that the Swedish security service has been working on since the protests directed against Sweden in connection with the sensational burning of the Koran in January, during which attacks were called for internationally,” Trehörning added.
She emphasized that the coordinated sweeps had been conducted at an early stage, and added that security forces cannot wait for terror acts to be in progress before acting to thwart them. The terrorist attack was not imminent, she said.
The raids come months after Rasmus Paludan, the Danish-born leader of the Danish-Swedish political party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), triggered an international incident when he set fire to copies of the Islamic holy book outside of the Turkish embassies in Copenhagen and Stockholm. Turkey, which has been blocking Sweden’s NATO application, cited Paludan’s Quran-burning stunt—and the Swedish government’s failure to stop it—as a reason for its decision.
Preliminary investigations will be conducted by the security police under the direction of prosecutors at the National Security Unit.
