About 15,000 texts “calling for revenge against Quran burners” were sent in the summer of 2023, according to a statement released by Sweden’s Prosecution Authority. This was in response to many protests that involved the destruction of the Quran.
According to the authority, “the goal was to cause division in Swedish society.”
Sweden’s Sapo spy agency stated in a statement that it had concluded that a hacker gang had operated “to carry out an influence campaign on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.””The primary objective was, among other things, to depict Sweden as an anti-Islamic nation,” stated in a statement Sapo Chief of Operations Fredrik Hallstrom.
Swedish media revealed on August 1, 2023, that a great deal of individuals had received text messages threatening to take revenge on those who had set fire to the Islamic holy book.
Prosecutors said that an investigation had revealed the Anzu team was responsible for the operation, but the case had been stopped since it was not thought that the suspects could be prosecuted.
Senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist stated, “Our view is that the conditions essential to pursue charges abroad or an extradition to Sweden for individuals suspected of being behind the attack are missing because the perpetrators are operating on behalf of a foreign power, in this case, Iran.”
Prisoner exchange
A string of demonstrations, including the burning of Qurans, had turned Sweden into a “prioritized target,” according to Sweden’s intelligence agency Sapo, which increased its danger level to four out of five in August of last year.
The focused protests over the summer of 2023 damaged relations between Sweden and numerous Middle Eastern countries.
Twice in July of that year, Iraqi demonstrators assaulted the Swedish embassy in Baghdad; on the second occasion, they set fire to the compound.
The Swedish government noted the country’s laws protecting the right to free speech and assembly and denounced the desecrations.
In recent times, there has been strain in relations between Sweden and Iran, primarily due to the arrest and conviction of Hamid Noury in Sweden.
Noury, a former prisons official from Iran, was detained at the Stockholm airport in November 2019 and given a life sentence in July 2022 for his involvement in the 1988 mass murders that occurred in Iranian prisoners.
The two nations confirmed in June that Noury would be released in Sweden in return for a diplomat from the European Union and another Swede.
The two Swedes were Saeed Azizi, a Swedish national detained in Iran in November 2023, and Johan Floderus, an EU official.
Meanwhile, Floderus had been detained in Iran since April 2022 on espionage charges, for which he faced the possibility of execution.
Additionally, in May, Sapo said that Iran was using juvenile members of Swedish criminal gangs as go-betweens for “acts of violence” directed at Israeli and other Swedish interests.
