Current Events > Sweden has long been a base for Jihadists

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https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/sverige-16

Many violent extremists have had their base in Sweden

On Tuesday, the trial of the terrorist Rakhmat Akilov begins after the attack on Drottninggatan in Stockholm in April. Before the attack, Sweden has been relatively spared from serious terrorist attacks. However, for several decades, Sweden has been a basis for recruiting violent extremists who have left and are suspected of, or have participated in, terrorist attacks or terrorist preparations abroad.

"Sweden has stood out," says Peder Hyllengren, a researcher at the Swedish Defense College, about the influence of the Swedish violence-threatening jihadist environment in the international terrorist networks.

He aims primarily at the number of Swedes who, after the war in Syria broke out in 2011, left there and to Iraq to join IS and other terrorist networks.

"From Sweden, about 300 people are estimated, and it is the second most in the EU in relation to our population."

According to Peder Hyllengren, hundreds of Swedes have built up contacts with violent jihadists from other countries and entered into various terrorist cells that have committed attacks around Europe.

"The most striking examples are Mohamed Belkaid (who was killed in a police intervention in Brussels after the Paris Rally. Note.) And Osama Krayem suspected of participating in the attacks in Paris and Brussels," he said.

They are not the first Swedes or people with strong connections to Sweden who have participated or suspected of being involved in Islamic terrorism abroad. Sweden has been a country for at least a couple of decades, from which people were recruited to training camps and to fight in conflict zones around the world.

Several of them have also been convicted of various terrorist offenses in Morocco, the United States, Denmark, Syria, Bosnia and Greece during the past decade.

Why has Sweden become a so-called "hot spot" for jihadists?

"There have been opportunities to act from Sweden and there have also been key personnel who have run in a way that has not really been possible in all European countries.

Another reason is that, according to Peder Hyllengren, the legislation has lagged behind and, according to him, it has led to the fact that the jihadist networks have been able to work relatively undisturbed in Sweden.

Sensitive issue in Sweden
The security police have received quite a lot of criticism and mistrust has been directed to the authority after the terror prosecution that was raised in the early 2000s.

What role could it have played?

"I think the activism that existed against both the Security and those who tried to lift the seriousness of these issues. This meant that the threshold became higher for both politicians and others to enter this area, he says.

"You risk being identified as racist in a way that you did not see in other European countries. There, this question was as uncontroversial as the importance of combating Nazism and right-wing extremism. But in Sweden it took a long time before discussing jihadism in the same way that we discussed nazism for a long time, "says Hyllengren.

Can you count Rakhmat Akilov among the Swedes, or people with Swedish links, as part of the international terrorist environment?

"He would like to see himself as an IS warrior and Sweden has been a base for which he was operating. He has had an extensive international network of contacts, having discussed the choice of methods and methods so that he is part of this environment. And he wants both the Islamic state's appreciation for what he has done, he says.

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ROBANN_88 posted...

https://www.svt.se

literally svt.se
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Were_Wyrm posted...

literally svt.se

What's wrong with it?
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Fishy posted...

Were_Wyrm posted...

literally svt.se

What's wrong with it?

it's one of the most reliable news sources in the Swedish media.
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ROBANN_88 posted...

it's one of the most reliable news sources in the Swedish media.

i was gonna say, i looked it up and it's gov't funded
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Well yeah, I can't think of anywhere in a traditionally non-shithole country where I have to worry about taking a literal grenade to the limbs other than Malmo, aka Little Syria.
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Yeah this news came directly from TT so I wouldn't really doubt it. SVT might be criticized for having a "PC bias", but they are definitely among the more serious news outlets in the business, and usually a lot more reliable than privately owned ones.
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also, don't forget that that asshole Michael Skrmo a.k.a. Abdul Samad al Swedi is still alive, and that while he was in Syria, fighting for ISIS, he still got government welfare money from Sweden.

https://x.cdn-expressen.se/images/2b/84/2b8406550f024f838eb673bd33469796/16x9/680.jpg
just look at that stupid face.
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Sweden
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