2023-07-20 10:12:13
The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was set on fire this Thursday, around 3 a.m., during a demonstration organized by the religious leader Moqtada al-Sadr. The Swedish Foreign Ministry in Stockholm said embassy staff were “safe” and “in regular contact” with officials. Calm was subsequently restored.
Several civil defense trucks eventually brought the fire under control, while the security forces, deployed in large numbers, used water cannons and electric batons to drive the demonstrators away from the embassy. They responded with stone throwing. The extent of the damage remains to be determined, according to the Iraqi interior minister.
Iraq calls for an investigation
The protest comes as an Iraqi refugee named Salwan Momika announced on his Facebook page in Sweden that he planned to burn a copy of the Quran and the Iraqi flag outside the Iraqi embassy. The rally planned for the occasion was authorized by the Swedish police. “We are mobilized today to denounce the fact of burning the Koran, which is only love and faith,” said a protester. “We demand from the Swedish government and the Iraqi government that this type of initiative cease”.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry condemned “in the harshest terms” the fire at the Swedish embassy and called for “an urgent investigation” in order to “uncover the circumstances of the incident and identify the perpetrators to bring them to account in accordance with the law”.
On June 28, refugee Salwan Momika had already burned a few pages of a copy of the Koran in front of Stockholm’s largest mosque during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. This had already angered supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, who had occupied the Swedish embassy for a quarter of an hour before leaving.
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