2023-12-04 23:50:22
Last week, the Swedish authorities decreed the closure of the Córdoba International School in Stockholm, a chartered Islamic center. The security forces raised the alarm over its links with jihadist groups and warned of the risk of radicalization to which its more than 500 students were exposed, who must be transferred to other centers.
The inspectors considered the management “unfit to direct school activities” and withdrew the center’s license due to its connections with Islamist organizations, uncovered by the intelligence services. At least one member of the board of directors of ALM Education, the company that manages the center, had previously worked for a jihadist group abroad, according to the local press.
The spokesman for the main national security agency, Fredrik Hultgren-Friberg, explained that the school’s “representatives” had maintained links with “Islamists who favor violence.”
Two other daycare centers in the capital that also belong to ALM Education are being investigated for the same reasons, despite the fact that the company’s executive director, Ulla Parkkinen, has assured that there is “no risk of the children becoming radicalized.”
The incident has accentuated the concern that exists in Sweden about the almost 4,000 friskolor distributed throughout the country. They are charter schools, financed by the State but run by for-profit companies. A UK-inspired model that was established three decades ago to expand student choice. One in five children from 6 to 15 years old and one in three from 16 to 19 years old study in these centers.
Education Minister Lotta Edholm has met with industry experts to find new ways to limit religious teaching, restrict foreign ownership or prevent schools from paying dividends.
Radical Islam has returned to the top of Sweden’s security agenda in recent months following a series of Koran burnings and the rise of conspiracy theories accusing social services of systematically removing children from Swedish Muslim families. .
Last week, public television Sveriges published an investigation which found that several people who had gone to live under the orders of the Islamic State and returned to Sweden had been able to find work in social assistance. One of them had also set up a business to help children with their homework.
The report tracked 83 of the 150 Daesh returnees and found that at least 30 had since been charged with criminal offenses, including murder, assault and fraud.
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