Several hundred people rushed to the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad early Thursday morning. They climbed its walls and set it on fire in protest against the burning of the Qur’an. And the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in a statement that all embassy employees are safe, while condemning the attack and stressing the need for the Iraqi authorities to protect diplomatic missions.
According to Reuters, Thursday’s demonstration Muqtada al-Sadr Shiite cleric and political supporters It was stagedbecause in a few weeks they plan to burn the Koran in Sweden for the second time on Thursday – evidenced by communications posted in the popular Telegram group associated with the popular Shiite preacher and in other pro-Sadr media.
Swedish news agency TT reported that the Swedish police allowed a public meeting to be held in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday.
Videos uploaded to the One Baghdad Telegram group show protesters gathering in front of the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad around 1am local time, then beginning to surround the buildings an hour later. During the siege, the demonstrators climbed to the roof of one of the buildings, and a fire broke out, which was extinguished by the firefighters.
In late June, al-Sadr had already called for protests against Sweden and demanded the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador after an Iraqi man burned a Koran in Stockholm. Swedish police suspected the perpetrator, who presented himself as an Iraqi refugee in an interview, of incitement against an ethnic or national group.
After the Qur’an was burned at that time, two large demonstrations took place in front of the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, and at one point the demonstrators stormed the embassy grounds. At the time, the governments of several Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Morocco, protested the incident, and Iraq requested that the man be extradited so he could be tried in that country.
