Iraqi Protesters Storm Swedish Embassy in Baghdad over Quran Desecration
Online videos showed demonstrators at the diplomatic compound early Thursday morning waving flags and signs showing the influential Iraqi Shia religious and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
Later on Thursday morning, several fire fighting trucks had arrived at the embassy in Baghdad where skirmishes between Iraqi security forces and demonstrators had broken out, witnesses said.
Iraq’s foreign ministry has strongly condemned the attack on the embassy, the Reuters news agency reported.
“The Iraqi government has instructed the competent security authorities to conduct an urgent investigation and take the necessary security measures in order to uncover the circumstances of the incident and identify the perpetrators of this act and hold them accountable according to the law,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Swedish foreign ministry said staff at the embassy “are in safety” after the embassy was stormed and set alight.
The Swedish foreign ministry’s press office said that Iraqi authorities had a responsibility to protect diplomatic missions and staff. A source told Reuters earlier that no embassy staff had been harmed and declined to elaborate further.
Thursday’s demonstration at the embassy was called by supporters of Sadr to protest the second planned burning of a Quran in Sweden, according to posts in a popular Telegram group linked to the influential leader and other pro-Sadr media.
“We are mobilized today to denounce the burning of the Quran, which is all about love and faith,” protester Hassan Ahmed told the French news agency AFP.
“We demand that the Swedish government and the Iraqi government stop this type of initiative,” he said.
Swedish news agency TT reported on Wednesday that Swedish police had granted an application for a public meeting outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday.
The application said the applicant was seeking to burn a copy of the Quran and the Iraqi flag, TT reported.
Swedish media reported that Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee in Sweden, had organized the planned burning on Thursday.
Salwan also burned pages of a copy of the Quran in front of Stockholm’s largest mosque on June 28 during Eid al-Adha, a holiday celebrated by Muslims around the world.
That earlier incident also prompted supporters of Moqtada to storm the Swedish embassy in Baghdad the following day.
Swedish police had granted Momika a permit in line with the country’s free speech protections, but authorities later said they had opened an investigation over “agitation against an ethnic group”, noting that Momika had burned pages from the Islamic holy book very close to the mosque.
Source: Al Jazeera
