The Swedish Public Prosecutor’s Office has announced that it has identified a suspect in the killing of the anti-Islam activist who was murdered last January, a case that the Swedish Prime Minister suggested might involve foreign actors.
اضافة اعلان
In a statement, the prosecution said: “We have a clear picture of the sequence of events. After extensive technical investigations and review of surveillance footage obtained… the suspect’s current whereabouts remain unknown.”
The suspect’s name was not disclosed in the statement. However, court documents obtained by Reuters indicate that the suspect is a 24-year-old Syrian man who was living in Sweden at the time of the crime. The victim, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee known for publicly burning copies of the Quran, was shot three times in a murder described as “carefully premeditated.”
A preliminary court hearing is scheduled for Friday to issue an international arrest warrant for the suspect.
Momika was killed in a town near Stockholm just hours before the ruling in his trial for inciting hatred against an ethnic or national group. At the time, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stated that “there is clearly a possibility that the crime is connected to a foreign entity.”
The Quran-burning incidents, considered blasphemous by Muslims, triggered widespread condemnation and complicated Sweden’s NATO accession, which was officially completed in 2024.
In 2023, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that those who desecrate the Quran “must face the harshest penalties” and accused Sweden of having “declared war on the Islamic world” through its perceived support of such acts.
Following these events, Sweden raised its national terrorism alert in 2023 to the second-highest level, warning of threats targeting Swedes both domestically and abroad, before lowering it earlier this year to the third level on a five-point scale.
