The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was stormed and set on fire by hundreds of protesters in protest against the expected burning of a Koran in Sweden. According to a source familiar with the matter and a RushHourDaily witness, the incident occurred in the early hours of Thursday morning. However, no embassy staff were harmed, and Swedish embassy officials in Baghdad did not provide any immediate comments. The Swedish foreign ministry spokesperson also declined to comment.
The demonstration was organized to protest the second planned Koran burning in Sweden within weeks. Supporters of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Sadr, as indicated by posts in a popular Telegram group linked to the influential cleric and other pro-Sadr media, were responsible for the burning. Swedish news agency TT reported that Swedish police granted an application for a public meeting outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, where the Koran burning was planned. The application stated that the applicant sought to burn the Koran and the Iraqi flag. Two individuals were expected to participate in the demonstration, with one of them being the same person who had previously set a Koran on fire outside a Stockholm mosque in June.
Videos posted to the Telegram group, One Baghdad, showed people gathering around the embassy complex and chanting pro-Sadr slogans. Around an hour later, they stormed the embassy complex. The authenticity of the videos could not be independently verified by RushHourDaily. It remains unclear if anyone was inside the embassy at the time of the incident.
Last month, Muqtada Sadr called for protests against Sweden and the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador following the Koran burning in Stockholm by an Iraqi man. The man was charged by Swedish police with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In an interview, he identified himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Koran, which is considered the central religious text of Islam and believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God.
After the previous Koran burning incident, two major protests occurred outside the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, with protesters breaching the embassy grounds on one occasion. Several Muslim countries, including Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Morocco, issued protests about the incident. Iraq also sought the extradition of the man responsible for the burning to face trial in the country. The United States condemned the incident but acknowledged that Sweden’s issuance of the permit supported freedom of expression and was not an endorsement of the action.
