- Thursday, January 30, 2025
Anti-Islam campaigner Salwan Momika had burned copies of the Koran in public demonstrations in Sweden in 2023
By: India Weekly
AN IRAQI refugee and anti-Islam campaigner was shot dead in Sweden hours before he was due to receive a court verdict following a trial over burning the Quran, and five people were arrested over the shooting on Thursday (30).
The five were arrested in connection with the incident late on Wednesday and ordered detained by a prosecutor, Swedish police said on their website. They did not say if the shooter was among those detained.
Salwan Momika, 38, was shot in a house in the town of Sodertalje near Stockholm, public broadcaster SVT reported, citing unnamed police sources.
Momika had burned copies of the Quran in public demonstrations in 2023 against Islam.
A Stockholm court had been due to sentence Momika and another man Salwan Najem on Thursday in a criminal trial over “offences of agitation against an ethnic or national group,” but said the announcement of the verdict had been postponed.
According to the charge sheet, the duo desecrated the Quran, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims – on one occasion outside a Stockholm mosque.
A police spokesperson confirmed a man was shot dead in Sodertalje, but gave no other details.
The other defendant in the same court case was giving interviews on Thursday and posted a message on X, saying: “I’m next”.
The Security Service said that police were leading the investigation but “we are following the development of events closely to see what impact this may have on Swedish security,” a spokesperson told Reuters.
Swedish media reported that Momika was streaming live on TikTok at the time he was shot. A video seen by Reuters showed police picking up a phone and ending a livestream that appeared to be from Momika’s TikTok account.
Sweden in 2023 raised its terrorism alert to the second-highest level and warned of threats against Swedes at home and abroad after the Quran burnings, many of them by Momika, outraged Muslims and triggered threats from jihadists.
Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.
While the Swedish government condemned the wave of Koran burnings in 2023, it was initially regarded as a protected form of free speech.
Momika had lived in Sweden since 2018.
In October 2023, the Swedish Migration Agency revoked his residency permit, citing false information in his original application, but he was granted a temporary one as it said there was an “impediment to enforcement” of a deportation to Iraq.
The month before, Iraq had requested his extradition over one of the Quran burnings.
In March 2024, Momika left Sweden to seek asylum in Norway, telling AFP that Sweden’s freedom of expression and protection of human rights was “a big lie.”
Norway deported him back to Sweden several weeks later.
Before arriving in Sweden in 2018, Momika’s social media accounts tell a story of an erratic political career in Iraq.
It included links to a Christian armed faction during the fight against the Islamic State group, the creation of an obscure Syriac political party, rivalries with influential Christian paramilitaries and a brief arrest.
He also joined the massive anti-corruption protests that gripped Iraq in late 2019, which were met with a crackdown that killed over 600 people nationwide. (Agencies)
