On Thursday, Iraq expelled the Swedish ambassador in Baghdad and summoned the Iraqi charge d’affaires in Stockholm, in protest against the previously announced anti-Quran demonstration in Sweden, which was followed by hundreds of angry Iraqi demonstrators vandalizing the Swedish mission building in Baghdad.
A spokesman for Sweden’s foreign ministry said all seconded staff and embassy operations had been transferred to Stockholm, but gave no further details.
At Thursday’s event in Stockholm, two protesters kicked and partially damaged a copy of the Quran, but in the end did not set it on fire.
On June 28, two protesters damaged and then burned a copy of the Holy Quran in front of the Central Mosque in Stockholm. Sloane Momica, one of the organizers of the event, who is Iraqi-born, told the online edition of Swedish daily Aftonbladet at the time that they wanted to criticize Islam through book burnings.
Demonstrators took to the streets of Beirut and Baghdad on Friday to protest the desecration of the Koran in Sweden. In a demonstration of hundreds of people in Baalbek, Lebanon, demonstrators burned the Swedish flag, according to a recording by Al-Manar TV channel, affiliated with the Shiite organization Hezbollah.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said on Thursday that the attack on the Swedish embassy in Baghdad was “totally unacceptable,” adding later that the Swedish government firmly rejects the desecration of the Koran and any other holy book.
The foreign ministries of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar summoned the Swedish ambassadors in Riyadh, Tehran and Doha over the planned burning of the Qur’an on Thursday in Stockholm.
Turkey has issued an arrest warrant for Danish politician Rasmus Paludan and nine other suspects for allegedly burning the Quran in January in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc announced on Friday.
Cover photo credit: andersen_oystein via Getty Images
