A Swedish court found an anti-Islam campaigner guilty on Monday of hate crimes for staging public desecrations of the Holy Quran, in a ruling handed down five days after another man also being prosecuted over the incidents was shot dead.
Salwan Najem, a Swedish citizen, was given a suspended sentence and fines over the desecrations and derogatory comments he made about Muslims in the 2023 incidents, which led to unrest and inspired anger towards Sweden in Muslim countries.
Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s protests. Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion. In August of that year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of one to five, saying the Koran burnings had made the country a “prioritised target”.
His fellow campaigner, Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika, was shot dead last week on the day he had been due to receive his verdict in a parallel case.
No suspect has been charged yet in that killing; five people were detained but later released. Sweden’s prime minister has said a foreign state may have been behind it.
The 2023 Holy Quran desecrations made the balance between free speech rights and rules protecting ethnic and religious groups a major issue for Sweden, its Nordic neighbours and other European countries.
The Stockholm district court said in a statement that Najem, 50, and Momika had desecrated the holy book in various ways and made offensive statements directed towards Islam, representatives of the religion and activities in mosques.
“There is a wide scope within the framework of freedom of expression to be critical of a religion in a factual and objective debate,” judge Goran Lundahl said in a statement.
“At the same time, expressing one’s opinion about religion does not give one a free pass to do or say anything and everything without risking offending the group that holds that belief,” he said.
“Even if the motive was to criticise the religion of Islam, the actions and conduct exceeded by a clear margin what constitutes a factual debate and criticism. On all occasions, the demonstrations expressed contempt for the Muslim group,” Lundahl said.
Najem was found guilty of hate crimes for “having expressed contempt for the Muslim ethnic group because of their religious beliefs on four occasions”, the court said.
He was handed a suspended sentence, which in Sweden means that if he were to commit another crime during a two-year probation period, the court would re-evaluate his sentence.
He was also ordered to pay a fine of 4,000 kronor ($358).
Najem’s lawyer said he would appeal against the verdict.
“My client considers that his statements fall within the scope of criticism of religion, which is covered by the freedom of expression,” he said.
The court had dropped the case against Momika after he was killed.
