In the early hours of Thursday morning, a group of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in central Baghdad. They scaled the walls and set the embassy on fire in response to an expected Qur’an burning in Sweden. The Swedish foreign ministry confirmed that all embassy staff were safe and condemned the attack, calling for Iraqi authorities to protect diplomatic missions. The Iraqi foreign ministry also condemned the incident and instructed security forces to conduct a swift investigation and hold the perpetrators accountable.
The demonstration was organized by supporters of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who were protesting the second planned Qur’an burning in Sweden within weeks. Reports from a popular Telegram group linked to the influential cleric and other pro-Sadr media indicated that Sadr’s supporters called for the protest.
According to Swedish news agency TT, Swedish police granted an application for a public meeting outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, which stated the intention to burn the Qur’an and the Iraqi flag.
Videos posted on Telegram showed people gathering around the embassy, chanting pro-Sadr slogans. Later videos depicted smoke rising from a building in the embassy complex and protesters standing on its roof. It should be noted that the authenticity of these videos could not be independently verified by Reuters.
By dawn, security forces had deployed inside the embassy, and firefighters extinguished the remaining embers. Witnesses reported seeing smoke rising from the building during this time.
Protests outside the embassy subsided, with only a few dozen individuals lingering in the area. It is worth mentioning that late last month, Sadr had called for protests against Sweden and the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador following another Qur’an burning incident in Stockholm.
Swedish police charged the Iraqi man responsible for the previous burning with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In an interview, the man described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Qur’an, which is considered the central religious text of Islam.
Following the previous Qur’an 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, expressed their protests about the incident. Iraq sought the man’s extradition to face trial in their country. The United States condemned the incident but acknowledged Sweden’s issuance of the permit as an exercise of freedom of expression rather than an endorsement of the action.
Please note that additional information for this article was sourced from the Associated Press.
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