Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has called on the European Union to increase border security both at the external borders of the bloc as well as within it, and ensure that dangerous individuals are not able to stay illegally within the EU.
In a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday, October 17th, Kristersson said,
These terrorists want to frighten us into obedience and silence. That will not happen. This is a time for more security. We can’t be naive.
The PM visited Brussels on Wednesday for a commemorative ceremony. Kristersson and his Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo, laid wreaths along with a Swedish football scarf and a team shirt at the site where two Swedish football fans were shot and killed on Monday by a Tunisian living illegally in Belgium.
In a subsequent press conference together with De Croo and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, Kristersson expressed condolences to the families of the killed and injured and said he would try to meet the injured person later in the afternoon.
PM De Croo said the attack had shaken both Belgium and Sweden, adding that the fight against terrorism is not simple, but that the two countries would battle together.
Von der Leyen, according to Swedish Radio’s Ekot, took the opportunity to promote getting the EU’s new asylum rules passed but also said that the EU needs to put more pressure on the countries of origin—through financial support and investments—so that they will take back their citizens.
More information has been released regarding the background of Brussels terrorist Abdesalem Lassoued, who killed two Swedish nationals on Monday, including evidence of his own links to Sweden.
The 45-year-old Tunisian national, who was shot dead by Belgian police on Tuesday morning, arrived in Europe illegally in 2011, landing on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, which has recently made headlines for the massive surge of illegal arrivals.
Ulf Kristersson stated that Lassoued had been in Sweden occasionally from 2012 to 2014, the newspaper Expressen reports.
Fredrik Hultgren-Friberg, a spokesperson for the Swedish Security Service, also claimed that Lassoued had used different identities in Sweden saying, “He has probably used different identities when he travelled between countries.”
Lassoued used a different name on Facebook, where he posted videos following the killing of the two Swedish nationals, claiming to be allied with the Islamic State terror group.
“This person has never had a residence permit in Sweden. On the other hand, he has served a prison sentence here and after he had served the prison sentence, he was transferred to another EU country within the framework of the Dublin Regulation.” Jesper Tengroth, press officer at the Swedish Migration Agency said.
During his stay in Sweden in 2012, Lassoued was sentenced to two years and two months in prison for trafficking cocaine. When he was arrested in Malmö in September of that year, he was high on cocaine at the time and in possession of around 100 grams of the illicit substance.
Following his sentence by the Gothenburg District Court, Lassoued was sentenced not only to deportation from Sweden but was also banned from returning to the country for ten years.
Prior to this week’s terror attack, Lassoued had been living illegally in Belgium for several years after having his asylum claim rejected by the country in 2020. He had also attempted to claim asylum in Norway, Italy and Sweden.
His hatred of Sweden, in particular, is said to have become more pronounced this year, largely in reaction to the multiple demonstrations in the country that saw copies of the Islamic Quran desecrated or set on fire.
“The Swedish government is not burning the Quran to provoke Erdogan. They know that Turkey has a constitution that governs the country and they don’t care about the Quran. Sweden is doing it to send out a message to Muslims that their leaders are worthless, cowardly and collaborators,” Lassoued said on Facebook in March.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Sweden for allowing burnings of the Quran, going as far as saying that if the practice remained legal, Turkey would not approve Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance.
“Sweden, don’t even bother! As long as you allow my holy book, the Quran, to be burned and torn, and you do so together with your security forces, we will not say ‘yes’ to your entry into NATO,” Erdogan said.
