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Sweden: Shambles in Asylum Heaven by Ingrid Carlqvist

  • In Sweden, only the people who say they are not applying for asylum are checked.


  • To avoid having to show any papers, a terrorist going to Sweden to commit acts of terror only has to tell the border police that he is seeking asylum. He will immediately be driven to the closest Immigration Service facility. And while the Immigration Service tries to figure out who he is, he can plan his attacks in the peace and quiet of the Swedish countryside.

  • The truth is that persons with evil intent know exactly what to do when they come here. That information spreads like wildfire. These new border controls are there for the sole purpose of reassuring the public. They have absolutely no effect on the influx of migrants.” — Border policeman at the Öresund Bridge (between Denmark and Sweden).

  • Despite many Swedes drawing a sigh of relief when the government announced that immigration was to be limited, the new policy does not really entail any difference at all.

In spite of the supposedly tighter asylum rules announced November 24, chaos rules in Sweden. So far, in 2015, 150,000 asylum seekers have been registered; but as there is nowhere to house them, people are sleeping in tents, on cardboard boxes in exhibition halls, and even on the street. Many run away from the Immigration Service facilities. More than22,000 people are supposed to be deported but refuse to leave. Swedes are understandablyterrified that terrorists might be hiding among the refugees. The police are busy with pointless border controls and cannot attend to their normal work. It is not an exaggeration to say that in this situation, Sweden has lost track of pretty much everything.

Some homeless migrants now sleep on the street in Sweden. (Image source: Expressen video screenshot)

Even the asylum seekers are complaining. On a Swedish public television program, Uppdrag Granskning, aired on December 2, Salwa, a mother of young children, told the reporter how she is forced to live in an asylum house along with men she called “bad people.” When the reporter explained to Salwa that 10,000 new asylum seekers arrive every week, and this was why everything was topsy-turvy, she replied: “Then close the borders. Stop taking in more people. If you have ten guests in your house and there is not enough room, would you still take in ten more?”

Sweden’s Social Democrat Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, said in an interview last April with the daily Sydsvenskan,

“There is no limit [to the number of refugees Sweden can accept]. We will accept refugees according to the conventions that bind us. We have done it before. In the early 1990s, many came from the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Today, they are a natural part of the Swedish society. They contribute a lot.”

So, when Prime Minister Löfven and Vice Prime Minister, Åsa Romson (Green Party) presentedtheir new, tougher immigration policy on November 24, it sent shockwaves through the Swedish establishment. Journalists, who never asked the governing politicians a single critical question about their affinity for open borders, now appeared stunned — despite one authorityafter another, during the last few months, having warned of an imminent systemic collapse. When Romson started crying during the live press conference because, she said, she was “forced” to be a part of the tightening of the world’s most generous immigration policy, everyone believed that these new immigration rules must be for real.

The message conveyed to the Swedish people on November 24 was that the borders were now essentially being shut; that Löfven had discovered there was a limit. The political party most critical of immigration policy, the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna), declaredvictory. Its party leader, Jimmie Åkesson, immediately reached out to the Conservatives (Moderaterna) and the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna), offering to bring down the government and form a new one together with them. This invitation was immediately declined. The reply should probably be viewed in the light of all seven parties in Parliament having vowednever to co-operate with the “xenophobic” Sweden Democrats.

It does not matter, therefore, that the other parties have now adopted much of the Sweden Democrats’ policies, or that many Conservatives actually want to take them even further and could easily get them through Parliament by forming a government with the Sweden Democrats.

An outsider may get the impression that every party in Sweden is now competing over who can suggest harsher austerity measures. The Conservatives say they want, among other things, to stop people who are coming from other EU countries from applying for asylum in Sweden. The Conservatives also say they want new measures for deporting those who have had their application rejected. The government is already negotiating with Afghanistan to try to persuade it to take back some of the many Afghans (36,261 in total; 20,947 supposedly “children”) who applied for asylum in Sweden this year.

So far, no journalist in the mainstream media seems to have discovered that the new border controls — implemented because the government evidently decided there is “a serious threat to public order and safety in the country” — have had no discernible effect. The media still give the public the impression that asylum seekers are actually stopped at the border, and that, as the Minister for Justice and Migration, Morgan Johansson, announced, all border crossings will be controlled before Christmas.

As noted last month, however, to avoid having to show any papers, a terrorist going to Sweden to commit acts of terror only has to tell the border police he is seeking asylum. He will immediately be driven to the closest Immigration Service facility. While the Immigration Service tries to figure out who he is, he can plan his attacks in the peace and quiet of the Swedish countryside. And as it takes the Immigration Service 222 days, on average, to establish a plausible identity, he need not be in any hurry.

One person who has grown tired of this whole charade is actually one of the Border Police at the Öresund Bridge (between Denmark and Sweden). He told Gatestone Institute that every day, the new controls cause a number of people — many of whom had planned on passing through Sweden to seek asylum in Finland or Norway — to return to Denmark of their own volition. But, he said, it is rare that someone refuses to show identification or apply for asylum, and thus be turned down.

“The truth is that persons with evil intent know exactly what to do when they come here,” he said.

“That information spreads like wildfire. These new border controls are there for the sole purpose of reassuring the public. They have absolutely no effect on the influx of migrants. The public is given a completely erroneous picture of what we are doing. They do not understand that we spend enormous amounts of time checking Swedish and Danish commuters. If we do not, the press goes crazy and starts screaming about discrimination.

“It seems as if those in power do not want the people who are here illegally to be deported. They give them free health care, free dental care, and schooling for their children. It is mixed messages all the time. I think they need to make up their minds about what they want. These controls mean nothing. They are just a formality to make everything look good and avoid discriminating against anyone. We should put our time and effort where they are needed.”

When asked by Gatestone why the police were allocating enormous resources to border controls that in fact do not amount to anything, the Press Officer at the Swedish National Police Agency (Rikspolisstyrelsen), Stephan Ray, stated that he did not have time to discuss it because he needed to go to the bathroom; then hung up the phone.

An expert on international law, who asked to remain anonymous, told Gatestone that he could no longer understand what the government was thinking by allowing potentially dangerous people into Sweden. Nowhere in any international conventions, he said, does it say that the right of asylum takes precedence over the security of a country’s own population. The most reasonable thing to do, he said, would be to establish fenced-in refugee camps near the borders and not let the asylum seekers out until it was determined that they were not terrorists or war criminals: “According to the Refugee Convention of 1951,” he said, even if people are war criminals and risk facing the death penalty at home, a country has the right to send them back.”

Even so, convicted murderers and war criminals — happily for them — get to stay in Sweden. The rule is that no one risking the death penalty or persecution in their home country will be sent back. This includes even people who have committed capital crimes in Sweden and been sentenced to deportation. It is uncertain that the IKEA-murderer, Abraham Ukbagabir, can be deported to Eritrea after serving his time in prison. There are, apparently, “hindrances” to enforcing deportations to Eritrea. Recently, the alternative-media site, Nyheter Idagrevealedthat, as there are “hindrances” to deporting people to Syria, terrorists discovered to be Islamic State combatants seeking asylum will get to stay in Sweden.

When Gatestone asked the Immigration Service why it was more concerned about the safety of foreign citizens than the lives of Swedish citizens, Matilda Niang of the Immigration Service press office replied that it would be inhumane to lock up asylum seekers until their identity had been established. “A lock-up,” she said, “would also affect asylum seekers who did not commit any crimes.”

So, despite many Swedes drawing a sigh of relief when the government announced that immigration was to be limited, the new policy does not really entail any difference at all.

No sitting politician has yet expressed doubt about the wisdom of turning Sweden from a Swedish country into a multicultural one, and none has yet said the policy of importing migrants needs to stop.

It may well be that the government’s measures are only a facade, designed to soothe the Swedish people, in the hope of relieving some of the pressure.

Among these new measures are:

  • A moratorium on permanent residency status. From now on, a residency status is valid for three years, with an option for a one-year extension. Permanent residency is given only to persons who, after this time, are able to support themselves financially.
  • Stricter limits on bringing in relatives.
  • Tightening demands on self-sufficiency and the ability to support financially one’s own family.
  • Medical determination of so-called unaccompanied refugee children.
  • Identity checks on all public transport: everyone on a ferry, train, or bus to Sweden must show a passport or a driver’s license.

The temporary residency is a message that will reach migrants quickly. Whether or not this means that fewer people will get to stay is doubtful. Nothing prevents the government from transforming the temporary residencies into permanent ones after the four years expire. There will also be the problem of what to do with migrants who do not leave at that point. Medically determining the age of the many Afghans who claim to be under 18, in order to get a fast track on their asylum application, might have some effect. Sweden’s failure to age-test asylum seekers has led to an avalanche of “bearded children.” Each week, over 1,000 “children” arrive, of whom 80% come from Afghanistan. In Denmark, where age-testing has been routine, it turned out that at least 50% of these so-called children were in fact adults; and in Norway and Finland, this number was 66%.

About 75% of all the “children” who apply, are granted asylum in Sweden. It is therefore extremely popular, when seeking asylum, to claim to be under 18. In 2013, 4,000 arrived. In 2014, the number was 7,000; and during the first eleven months of 2015, a staggering 32,180“unaccompanied refugee children” sought asylum in Sweden. More than half were from Afghanistan; the second largest group was from Syria, followed by Eritrea and Somalia. About 2,000 were girls.

A few days after the announcement of Sweden’s new asylum rules, the influx of migrants slowed significantly. On November 28 and 29, from a peak of about 1,500 a day, only 392 and 375 people, respectively, were registered. Most were from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. The next day, however, the number of applications once again jumped to more than 1,000.

An intelligence analyst at the Immigration Service, Anders Westerlund, told the dailyAftonbladet that the decline was most likely due to fewer refugees arriving on the Greek isles from Turkey. “We also see that tougher border controls in the Balkans, and the cold weather, are keeping people from coming to Europe,” he said. “Winter is coming, and that makes the journey riskier.”

Meanwhile, police are swamped with pointless border controls and cannot do their usual work, and criminals roam the streets.

District Attorneys [DAs] apparently have so little to do, that they recently promised to supply the Immigration Service with 30 underemployed DAs. The Immigration Service, despite having recently hired another 1,200 employees, is, of course, struggling to cope with the current situation. In total, Immigration Service staff wages cost the Swedish taxpayers 250 million kronor (about $29,000,000) a month, or about 3 billion kroner (about $350,000,000) a year.

“We can lend them 30 DAs and clerks,” chief prosecutor Solveig Wollstad said in an interview with Gatestone, “because our influx of cases has gone down. The police are busy doing other things, such as fighting terrorism and taking care of migrants.”

When asked if the situation was possibly due to crime going down, Wollstad said, “No, no, no. The decrease is due to the police working so much with other things, such as preventing terror and dealing with the refugee flow. More police are needed at the borders now. Sweden is in crisis. It is not just us who are lending out staff: it is also the National Courts Administration, the Enforcement Authority, the Prison and Probation Service and a number of other authorities.”

In short, the only discernible effect of the “humanitarian superpower’s” new asylum rules is that the Swedish police are busy checking the identities of people who do not want to seek asylum in Sweden, and therefore lack the resources to apprehend criminals.

“As long as the ingrained rhetoric in Sweden is viewed as a manifestation of divinity and goodness,” writes Associate Professor of Business Administration and author Jan Tullberg in a recent article, “political ineptness will continue paralyzing the country.”

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.

Sweden: Sexual Assaults at Swimming Pools by Ingrid Carlqvist

  • Young male asylum seekers have turned Sweden’s public swimming pools into ordeals of rape and sexual assault.
  • Swedish politicians seem convinced that some education on “equality” will change the ways of men, who, since childhood, have been taught that it is the responsibility of women not to arouse them — and therefore the woman’s fault if the man feels like raping her.

  • More and more Swedes are now avoiding public pools altogether.
  • Staff at Malmö’s Hylliebadet family adventure pool were given strict instructions not to report certain things, and above all, never to mention the ethnicity or religion of those who cause problems at the pool.
  • “What the Afghans are doing is not wrong in Afghanistan, so your rules are completely alien to them. … If you want to stop Afghans from molesting Swedish girls, you need to be tough on them. Making them take classes on equality and how to treat women is pointless. The first time they behave badly, they should be given a warning, and the second time you should deport them from Sweden.” — Mr. Azizi, manager of a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan

Men and women, in a Swedish tradition, have swum together in public pools for over 100 years. Many people are now wondering if we will be forced to give up this practice — because young male asylum seekers have turned public swimming pools into ordeals of rape and sexual assault.

Mixed bathing in Sweden started in the small southern fishing village of Mölle. Around 1890, the “Sin of Mölle” gained notoriety. Men and women were swimming together! Out in the open and shamelessly flaunting their striped bathing attire. It was a sensation that echoed all over Europe, and people came from everywhere to partake in the exciting new activity. Danes poured in, and even the German Emperor Wilhelm II made his way to Mölle in July 1907.

It should come as surprise to no one that men from the Middle East and North Africa have quite a different view of women than Swedish men do. The only mystery is why Swedish politicians have got it in their heads that everyone who sets foot on Swedish soil will immediately embrace our values, our view of women and our traditions.

Now that it is finally beginning to dawn on them that many Afghan, Somali, Iraqi and Syrian men (the largest immigrant groups coming to Sweden now) think that women who run around scantily clad are fair game, the politicians are dumbfounded. Of course, they cannot admit that this — to Swedes — completely alien view of women has anything to do with Islam, because then they would become victims of their own claim that everyone who criticizes Islam is an “Islamophobe.”

For many years, it was possible to cover up the abuse, not least because the mainstream media chose to call the perpetrators “youth gangs,” and never mention that they were almost always immigrants from Muslim countries. In Malmö, one of the most immigrant-heavy cities in Sweden, and where Swedes have actually been a minority since 2013, the problems at public pools started at least 15 years ago.

In 2003, “youth gangs” were so disruptive to other guests at the indoor water park Aq-va-kul that on several occasions, the establishment was forced to close. Despite investing 750,000 kronor ($88,000) in taller entrance gates, a glass-enclosed reception desk, surveillance cameras, and an Arabic-speaking “pool host” to tackle the security problems, things just kept getting worse. In 2005, senior staff member Bertil Lindberg told the local daily newspaper, Sydsvenskan: “Things have escalated this year. Large gangs of 10-20 young people threaten and provoke other guests as well as the staff. They did not come here to swim; they are just looking for trouble.”

One of the problems is that young Muslim men refuse to take a shower before bathing, and keep their underwear on under their swim trunks. For obvious reasons, this is not allowed, and when the staff call out the violators on this, trouble and threats ensue. On several occasions, gangs have ambushed staff members on their way home from work, and the company was forced to hire guards to make sure employees get home in one piece. Events reached a climax in 2013, when youth gangs smashed the interior, threw objects in the water and threatened other patrons. Aq-va-kul was closed, and the pool was drained and cleaned of shattered glass. A few days later the pool was reopened, but it closed permanently to the public in 2015. Now the facility has been renovated, but is only open to competitive swimmers and swim clubs.

In Stockholm, the Husbybadet pool in the heavily-immigrant suburb of Husby was the first public pool hit by trouble. In 2007, it was reported that the municipality was forced to build a separate sewage treatment facility, costing millions of kronor. The reason was unusually high levels of nitrogen in the water, because many young people insisted on bathing with their dirty underwear on. The municipality property director told daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter:

“Nitrogen is food for bacteria and a high nitrogen level produces malodorous air and filthy water. The nitrogen comes from urine and sweat. Quite simply, we have a problem with people keeping their dirty underwear on under their swim trunks. And then they get in the 38-degree [100-degree Fahrenheit] water in the hot tub. It is like sitting in your washing machine’s delicates cycle, and we use that water all the time. People should have swimwear on, not bathe in their regular clothes.”

The attitude towards nudity in Scandinavia is very different from that in the Middle East. Sweden has many nude beaches, where men and women swim together without a stitch of clothing, without the slightest hint of sexual harassment. In the gender-separated changing rooms at public pools, there is no sign of shyness. Swedish men and women see it as a matter of course to shower and wash properly before getting in the pool, and a couple of decades ago stern overseers even patrolled the changing rooms to check the patrons’ shower habits.

In Muslim countries, nudity is an extremely private thing, and one does not willingly take showers with others, not even with members of the same sex. All the public pool personnel with whom Gatestone has spoken confirm that Muslim men and women shower with their underwear on, and then keep them on under their swimwear. Many Muslim women bathe in a so-called burkini, a garment that covers the entire body, so when Muslim men see Swedish women in a bikini, many of them conclude that they must be “easy” women whom one is “allowed” to grope.

In 2015, when roughly 163,000 asylum seekers came to Sweden, the problems at public pools increased exponentially. More than 35,000 young people, so-called “unaccompanied refugee children,” arrived — 93% of whom are male and claim to be 16-17 years old. To prevent complete idleness, many municipalities give them free entrance to the public pools.

During the past few months, the number of reports of sexual assaults and harassment against women at public pools has been overwhelming. Most of the “children” are from Afghanistan, widely considered among the most dangerous places in the world for women. When the daily Aftonbladet visited the country in 2013, 61-year-old Fatima told the paper what it is like to be a woman in Afghanistan: “What happens if we do not obey? Well, our husbands or sons beat us of course. We are their slaves.”

To expect men from a culture that views women as men’s slaves to behave like Swedish men is not just stupid — it is dangerous. Mr. Azizi, the manager of a large hotel in Kabul, told Gatestone how an average Afghan man sees sexual attacks on women:

“What the Afghans are doing is not wrong in Afghanistan, so your rules are completely alien to them. Women stay at home in Afghanistan, and if they need to go out they are always accompanied by a man. If you want to stop Afghans from molesting Swedish girls, you need to be tough on them. Making them take classes on equality and how to treat women is pointless. The first time they behave badly, they should be given a warning, and the second time you should deport them from Sweden.”

One of the first reported incidents occurred in 2005, when a 17-year-old girl was raped at Husbybadet, in Stockholm. The 16-year-old perpetrator started groping her in the hot tub, and when the girl moved to a cave with streaming water, he and his friend followed her. They forced the girl into a corner, and while the friend held her down, the 16-year-old pulled off the girl’s bikini and raped her. During the trial, it emerged that some 30 people had witnessed the attack, but the teenagers continued the rape anyway.

The 16-year-old rapist was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention and his friend was acquitted. The victim was badly traumatized and had to be treated in a psychiatric care facility, after several failed suicide attempts.

Since then, virtually all public pools in Sweden have become dangerous places, especially to women. During the first two months of this year, reports of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment came in rapid succession. A few examples:

In Stockholm, during the first week of January, Sweden’s national swimming arena, Eriksdalsbadet, decided to separate men and women in the hot tubs. A controversial decision in Sweden, it came after several incidents in the pools had been reported to the police, mainly in November and December 2015. Conservative Anna König Jerlmyr (moderaterna), Stockholm city Commissioner in Opposition, did not believe that separating men and women was the right way to address the problems: “It is totally unacceptable for a public swimming pool to act this way. This is tantamount to giving in to the sexual harassment and sending signals in favor of a view of women that is utterly reprehensible. More staff, and banning offenders from the premises, would have been preferable,” she told the daily, Dagens Nyheter.

Olof Öhman, head of the Sports Administration in Stockholm, told the paper: “There are similar problems at all the public pools in Stockholm, even if most complaints regard Eriksdalsbadet.”

On January 14, officials at the Rosenlundsbadet water park in Jönköping reported that they would increase security. According to Operations Manager Gunnel Eriksson, the decision was mainly due to the behavior of a new group of bathers — unaccompanied refugee boys: “You can tell from their behavior that they come from a different culture; there is a cultural clash. We can see that they react to the undressed bit.” The heightened security is also necessary because many of the young migrant men cannot swim, overestimate their abilities, and end up in dangerous situations.

On January 15, a local paper, Kungälvsposten, wrote that two girls had been sexually assaulted in an elevator at the Oasen public pool Oasen, in Kungälv. The two suspected perpetrators are “unaccompanied refugee children.” Jonas Arngården, Municipal Director of Social Affairs, told the paper: “This shows that we need to step up the work concerning issues of equality and interaction among our new arrivals, in schools as well as at the asylum houses.”

The attack caused members of the Nordic Resistance Movement (Nordiska motståndsrörelsen), a supposed neo-Nazi organization, to show up at Oasen on February 13. They put on green shirts with the word “Security Host” (Trygghetsvärd) printed on the back, and “patrolled” the facility.

The municipality had not reacted strongly to the sexual assault, but the visit by vigilantes scared the municipal management, and it immediately called the Oasen management to a meeting. Mayor Miguel Odhner told the daily, Expressen/GT: “It is completely unacceptable to have some kind of disguised vigilantes at municipal pools. It is very, very serious that we have violent extremism vying for greater foothold in our municipality.”

The Eriksdalsbadet national swimming arena in Stockholm (left) has become infamous for the many incidents of migrants sexually assaulting women and children at the facility. At the Oasen pool in Kungälv (right), two girls were recently sexually assaulted by “unaccompanied refugee children.” In response, members of the “Nordic Resistance Movement” showed up, wearing shirts bearing the label “Security Host” (Trygghetsvärd), and “patrolled” the facility.

On January 18, the management of the Fyrishov public pool, in Uppsala, revealed that in 2015, it there were seven reported cases of child molestation at the facility. According to Fyrishov, the suspected offenders are all newly-arrived migrants — teenage boys who do not speak Swedish. The facility increased security in August, hiring guards and giving the staff stricter monitoring instructions.

On January 21, there were reports that the number of sexual assaults had increased dramatically at the Aquanova adventure pool in Borlänge. In 2014, one case was reported; in 2015, about 20 cases were reported. The incidents involved women having their bikinis ripped off, being groped in the water slide and sexually assaulted in the restrooms. Ulla-Karin Solum, the CEO of Aquanova, told the public broadcaster Sveriges Television that many incidents “are due to cultural clashes.”

Aquanova Staff member Anette Nohrén confirmed that all the suspects are born abroad, and complained that “it is a huge problem. It steals the focus from our primary task, which is safety concerns, when we are constantly forced to intervene to try and prevent assaults, and afterwards, to try and figure out what happened.”

Aquanova now implemented new rules; among them, that young men from asylum houses need to have a responsible adult accompanying them — one adult for every three underage asylum seekers. The adult needs to stay with them in the changing room as well as in the pool area.

On January 25, the daily newspaper Expressen revealed that a girl was raped at the now infamous Eriksdalsbadet swimming arena at the beginning of the month. The police will now increase their presence at the facility, and will patrol inside regularly.

On January 26, there were reports that a woman and two girls had recently been sexually assaulted by a group of young men who spoke neither Swedish nor English, at the Storsjöbadet pool in Östersund. Despite the incident, the young men were not removed from the premises — a lapse the staff later admitted was a mistake.

On January 27, Växjö municipality announced that it plans to hire a security guard to patrol the local public pool. After two 11-year-old girls were sexually assaulted by a group of boys. The boys attacked the girls in an area hidden from the view of lifeguards. Mikael Linnander, father of one of the girls, told the daily, Kvällsposten: “Seven or eight guys attacked the girls. Two of them touched them between their legs and groped their breasts.” The abuse did not stop until a woman swimming with her children reprimanded the boys. After the incident, the two boys were barred from the adventure pool area, but were allowed to stay at the facility.

On February 1, local media reported that at least five girls and women had been sexually assaulted at a public pool in Vänersborg during the previous few weeks. The victims were girls under 15, as well as women in their thirties. The police said they had no suspects, but stated that the case had high priority.

On February 25, another sexual assault was reported at the Eriksdalsbadet swimming arena in Stockholm. Police spokesman Johan Renberg told Expressen that a group of girls had found themselves surrounded by some 10 young men who tried to grope them. A staff member saw what was happening and called the police. The girls were able to identify the young men, whose ethnicity the paper did not report. The men were not arrested, but will be questioned at a later time.

Given the recent wave of sexual assaults at public pools, it is something of a mystery why the recently-opened Hylliebadet family adventure pool in multicultural Malmö has not reported any sexual assaults at all. Hylliebadet, which cost 349 million kronor (about $41 million) to build, had a chaotic opening week in August 2015. After only a few days, 27 “incidents” had been reported, but none involved sexual assaults.

“No, I have never heard of anything like that happening here,” a Hylliebadet employee told Gatestone. However, when we spoke to other staff members off the record, they told us they had been given strict instructions not to report certain things, and above all, never to mention the ethnicity or religion of those who cause problems at the pool. Another employee told Gatestone:

“Of course we have had incidents here, particularly involving Afghan men groping girls. Not long ago, a man of Arab descent was caught masturbating in the hot tub. But we are not allowed to report things like that. These men understand that it is forbidden when we tell them, but they keep doing it anyway. They just smile and keep on doing it.”

It seems unlikely that Swedish politicians will start deporting sex offenders. The politicians seem convinced that some education on “equality” will change the ways of men, who, since childhood, have been taught that it is the responsibility of women not to arouse them — and therefore the woman’s fault if the man feels like raping her. Such a shift in attitude seems as likely as if a Swede visiting Saudi Arabia would suddenly renounce alcohol just because it is forbidden there. The Swede would follow the rules as long as somebody was watching, and then take every opportunity to drink his schnapps, because it is a thousand-year-old Swedish tradition, and something most Swedes feel is agreeable as well as just.

Another public pool employee told Gatestone that the refugee boys frighten away ordinary patrons and that more and more Swedes are now avoiding public pools altogether.

“Even Swedes who have bought expensive season tickets stay away now, because they think the mood is unsettling. Considering that they young asylum seekers get their entrance fee paid by the municipalities, one could rightfully say that tax money is being used to drive away those who would pay.”

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.

Sweden: Rapes, Acquittals and Severed Heads One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Sweden: November 2015 by Ingrid Carlqvist

  • Some 30 Muslim men thought that the woman was in violation of Islamic sharia law, by being in Sweden unaccompanied by a man. They thought that she should therefore be raped and her teenage son killed.

  • Two Swedish citizens were convicted by a Gothenburg Court of joining an Islamist terror group in Syria and murdering two captives. Video evidence showed one victim being beheaded. “Every night when I have gone to bed, I have seen a head hanging in the air.” — Court Chairman Ralf G. Larsson.
  • Sometime during the night, the victim was awakened by the Iraqi as he raped her. The woman managed to break free and locate a train attendant. At first, the woman did not want to call the police. “She felt sorry for him [the rapist] … and was afraid he would be deported back to Iraq.”
  • One week after Sweden raised its terror alert level to the highest ever, the police raised another alarm — saying their weapons are simply not good enough to prevent a potential terror attack.

November 4: The Swedish Immigration Service sent out a press release, saying that it had hired close to a thousand additional employees since June. The Immigration Service now has over 7,000 employees, including hourly workers and consultants — double the 3,350 employees who worked there in 2012. Most of the new recruits work with the legal processing of asylum applications, but the units dealing with receiving migrants and filing their initial applications have also expanded considerably. As if the record influx of migrants this autumn were not crushing enough, the Immigration Service also had trouble retaining its staff. Employees complain about being badly treated: they are always expected to be on call, and possibly even work Christmas Eve.

November 4: Bobel Barqasho, a 31-year-old Syrian, was sentenced by Sweden’s Supreme Court to 14 years in prison. Before his case reached the Supreme Court, Barqasho had been sentenced by a lower court to 9 years in prison, then acquitted by the Court of Appeals. In February 2013, Barqasho threw his wife off a sixth-floor balcony. Against all odds, the woman survived the 13-meter (about 43 feet) fall, but was badly injured. When she woke up after five weeks in a coma, her head was held together by a helmet, her face felt loose, and her teeth were gone. In the Court of Appeals, the defense managed to plant reasonable doubt about the man’s guilt by claiming the woman was depressed and had jumped of her own free will] so the Court of Appeals set him free. By the time the Supreme Court pronounced its sentence of 14 years, Barqasho had disappeared. He is now being sought by Interpol.

November 6: The Grönkulla School in Alvesta closed after reports of a rape at the facility spread on social media. A Somali boy had apparently been sexually harassing a 12-year-old girl for some time. On October 17, he allegedly took his attentions a step farther, pulled the girl behind a bush and raped her. The girl’s father had been unsuccessful in trying to get the school to address the problem earlier, but even after the reported rape, the school’s management did not act. The boy was allowed to continue going to the school – just on a schedule different from the girl’s. Her distraught parents told the news website Fria Tider: “We are being spat on because we are Swedish.” In protest against the school’s management, many parents, viewing the school as having sided with the perpetrator, moved their children to other schools.

November 9: Social commentator and whistleblower Merit Wager revealed on her blog that administrators at the Immigration Service had all been ordered to “accept the claim that an applicant is a child, if he does not look as if he is over 40.” A staggering 32,180 “unaccompanied refugee children” had arrived during 2015 by December 1 — since then another 1,130 have come — and the government finally decided to take action. If its proposition is approved by Parliament, everyone who looks adult-aged will be forced to go through a medical age-determination procedure. One of the reasons Sweden stopped doing these in the first place, was that pediatricians refused to take part in them. They said the procedures were “unreliable.”

November 10: A 28-year-old Iraqi man was prosecuted for raping a woman on a night train between Finland and Sweden. The man had originally planned to seek asylum in Finland, but had found the living conditions there too harsh. He had therefore taken a train back to Sweden. In a couchette (sleeping car where men and women are together), the rapist and two other asylum seekers met one of the many Swedish women whose hearts go out to “new arrivals.” The woman bought sandwiches for the men; they drank vodka. When two of the men started groping the woman, she told them to stop, yet chose to lie down and go to sleep. Sometime during the night, she was awakened by the Iraqi as he raped her. The woman managed to break free and locate a train attendant. To the attendant’s surprise, the woman did not immediately want to press charges. The court documents state: “The train attendant asked if he should call the police. At first, the woman did not want him to do so, because she did not want to put N.N., an asylum seeker, in a tough spot. She felt sorry for him… and was afraid he would be deported back to Iraq.”

The man was given a sentence of one year in prison, payment of 85,000 kronor (about $10,000) in damages, and deportation — but will be allowed to come back to Sweden after five years.

November 10: An Algerian and a Syrian asylum seeker were indicted for raping a Swedish woman in Strängnäs. The men, 39-year-old from Algeria and 31-year-old from Syria, met the woman in a bar one night in August. When the woman left, one of the men followed her, pulled her to the ground, and assaulted her. Afterwards, the woman kept walking, and ran into two other men — the Syrian and another unidentified man — and was raped again. The Syrian reportedly also spit her in face and said, “I’m going to f–k you, little Swedish girl.” The men, who lived at the same asylum house, denied knowing each other when questioned by the police. The verdict was announced on December 1. Rapist number one was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, 117,000 kronor (about $14,000) in damages, and deportation to Algeria. Rapist number two was convicted of aggravated rape and sentenced to four years in prison. He cannot be deported, however, because “there are currently hindrances towards enforcing deportations to Syria.” He was also ordered to pay the woman 167,000 kronor (about $20,000) in damages.

November 13: A trial began against eight Eritrean men, between the ages of 19 and 26, who according to the District Court, “crudely and ruthlessly” gang-raped a 45-year-old woman. She had been waiting in a stairwell for a friend when the men invited her into an apartment. Inside, she was thrown on the floor, held down, beaten and brutally raped. When questioned by the police, she said, “It felt as if there were hands and fingers everyplace. Fingers penetrated me, vaginally, anally. It hurt very much. I could feel the fingernails.” She said she could also hear the Eritreans laughing and speaking in their own language while they raped her. “They seemed to be enjoying themselves,” she said.

When two of the men started fighting over who should rape her next, she tried to flee, but one of the men hit her over the head; she fell unconscious. After coming to, she escaped out a window and was able to reach a neighbor.

The District Court of Falun established that several men had taken part in the attack, but the District Attorney was unable to prove who had done what. Therefore, only one man was convicted of aggravated rape, and sentenced to five years in prison. The others were sentenced to only 10 months in prison for helping to conceal a serious criminal offense. After serving their time, the men will be allowed to stay in Sweden.

November 14: The Swedish Security Service, Säpo, warned again of Muslim terrorists hiding among migrants. The number of individuals listed as potential security threats has tripled this year, and includes several hundred who may be ready to carry out “Paris-style” attacks. As the Immigration Service has a huge backlog in trying to register all 150,000 asylum seekers who have come to Sweden so far in 2015, there are probably also many migrants that would be considered potential security threats.

November 14: Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, made yet another strange statement with diplomatic consequences. The day after the Paris attacks, in an interview with Swedish Public Television, Wallström was asked, “How worried are you about the radicalization of young people in Sweden who choose to fight for ISIS?” Wallström replied:

“Yes, of course we have a reason to be worried not only here in Sweden but around the world, because there are so many who are being radicalized. Here again, you come back to situations like that in the Middle East, where not least the Palestinians see that there isn’t any future for us [the Palestinians], we either have to accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.”

Two days later, the Swedish ambassador to Israel, Carl Magnus Nesser, was called to a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Its spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, later told Reuters, “The Swedish Foreign Minister’s statements are appallingly impudent… [She] demonstrates genuine hostility when she points to a connection of any kind between the terror attacks in Paris and the complex situation between Israel and the Palestinians.”

In a formal statement, the Swedish Foreign Ministry denied that Margot Wallström’s remark had connected the Paris attacks with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Swedish Conservative (Moderaterna) Member of Parliament, Hanif Bali, sarcastically tweeted that it seemed the Foreign Minister is suffering from an “obvious case of Israel-Tourette’s.”

November 18: The Authority for Civil Protection and Contingency Planning (MSB) warned that the asylum situation was not only “very strained,” but that things keep getting worse — and that in some parts of Sweden, the authorities can only function until the end of December. Meanwhile, the Immigration Service calculated that another 13,000 beds are needed in so-called evacuation accommodations. “The problem cannot be fully solved even if the Armed Forces help provide more housing or if the MSB could arrange more tent accommodations,” the authority wrote.

The massive influx of asylum seekers has also led to native Swedes “being crowded out of the health care and social services systems,” according to the MSB. “It [the MSB] is so busy handling unaccompanied children and asylum seekers, that there simply is not enough time to tend to the everyday functions, such as healthcare and social services,” said Alexandra Nordlander, Chief of Operative Analysis at the MSB, to the daily tabloid, Aftonbladet.

November 19: A fire broke out at Lundsbrunn Spa, a few weeks after plans were announced to convert the historic building into the biggest asylum-seekers’ home in Sweden. According to the police, the fire was not an arson, but started in a wood-pellet stove.

Many hotels and spas have transforming themselves into asylum-seekers’ housing, in order to profit from lucrative deals offered by the Immigration Service. Lundsbrunn Spa, near a mineral spring, dates back to 1890; in 1817, a hospital was established on the grounds. The nearby village is home to fewer than 1,000 people, so when Lundsbrunn Spa decided to accept an offer from the Immigration Service, the village faced a doubling of its population. The owners of Lundsbrunn wrote on the Spa’s website that they see the transformation from spa to asylum-seekers’ home as a temporary measure.

November 20: Norwegian businessman Petter Stordalen, the billionaire owner of Nordic Choice Hotels, announced that the chain’s many properties in Scandinavia and the Baltic states would no longer serve their guests sausage and bacon for breakfast. The breakfast buffet of the Nordic Choice’s Clarion Hotel Post in Gothenburg was named earlier this year the best hotel breakfast in the world by the British newspaper, The Mirror. But apparently, this award did not matter. The cause for the hotel’s decision was cited as “health reasons.” The internet, however, was soon abuzz with speculation that the real reason was adaptation to Islamic dietary laws (halal). One week later, Stordalen backtracked. The reaction from hotel guests had been too strong. Many people vented their anger over the withheld bacon on Stordalen’s Facebook page. Stordalen commented: “The guests have spoken. Comfort Hotels are bringing back bacon.”

November 23: Hassan Mostafa Al-Mandlawi, 32, and Al Amin Sultan, 30, were indicted in the Gothenburg Municipal Court, suspected of having traveled to Syria in 2013 and murdering at least two people there. The charge was terrorist crimes, (alternatively crimes against international law) and murder. Chief Prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnström, of the National Unit for Security Cases, said: “The act [was] committed with the intent to harm the state of Syria and intimidate the people, thus the classification: terrorist crimes. The hard part is to clarify fully whether these men have been part of an armed group, and acted within the frames of the armed conflict, or not.”

The accused men came to Sweden, one from Iraq and one from Syria, as children, but grew up in Sweden and are Swedish citizens. They traveled to Syria in 2013, and joined one of the many Islamist terror groups there. According to the prosecution, they murdered two captured workers in an industrial area of Aleppo by slitting their throats. The prosecutor wrote that, “Al-Mandlawi and Sultan have both expressed delight at the deeds.”

During the trial, films of the executions were shown, but both men still denied having committed the crimes. Those present in court agreed that the films were among the most disturbing ever displayed in a Swedish court. First, they show a man having his throat slit, the blood gushing before he dies. Then, the other victim’s head is severed from his body, and the killer holds up the severed head to loud cheers from the others. The court’s chairman, Ralf G. Larsson, told the news agency, TT: “Every night when I have gone to bed, I have seen a head hanging in the air.”

The verdict was announced December 14: Both men were convicted of terrorist crimes and sentenced to life in prison. The verdict will be appealed, the defense lawyers said.

Two Swedish citizens were convicted by a Gothenburg Court of joining an Islamist terror group in Syria and murdering two captives. Video evidence (left) showed one victim being beheaded. When asked if she is worried about the radicalization of young people in Sweden who choose to fight for ISIS, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström (right), blamed Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

November 25: The municipality of Ängelholm proudly announced that it had managed to hire a world-famous star to sing at the 500-year anniversary of the city of Ängelholm. Mezzo-soprano Susanne Resmark, of La Scala in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, would now, for the first time, sing in her hometown. The denizens of Ängelholm would get to enjoy the Resmark, considered by many one of the best Mezzo-sopranos, in a free performance. Two days later, however, the local paperHelsingborgs Dagblad, ran a story on how Resmark had posted on her Facebook page comments critical of Islam. This apparently sent representatives of the municipality into a panic; they cancelled the star’s performance. The journalist behind the story, Jan Andersson, admitted in an interview with Dispatch International that the paper’s reporters had gone over Resmark’s statements with a microscope, in an effort to force the municipality to cancel her appearance. “We did a damn fine job!” Andersson said.

November 27: One week after Sweden raised its terror alert level to the highest ever in the country (four on a five-point scale), the police raised another alarm — saying their weapons are simply not good enough to prevent a potential terror attack. “We are sent out without adequate weapons, only a nine millimeter service pistol. We are also told that there may not be enough protective vests and ballistic helmets. It feels like being sent out on a lion hunt with a pea-shooter and a jumpsuit made out of zebra meat,” wrote a police officer called “Christian,” in an internal incident report reviewed by the news agency, Siren.

His colleague, “Niklas,” wrote that he had to patrol, without a protective helmet, a location considered at risk of terror attacks, because none of the available helmets fit his head: “Without the right equipment, and with inadequate training in tactics and shooting, we still had to work as live targets without any kind of chance to defend ourselves or our [locations] against a potential attack.”

The police say they want to be able to use more powerful weapons, such as the HK MP5, a submachine gun that is popular with law enforcement agencies around the world. Few, however, have had the required training for it. Also, the existing MP5s are kept at police stations — not in patrol cars. Martin Lundin, of the Department of National Operations, conceded there was some merit to the criticism: “We will probably need more people who are able to handle that weapon in the future.”

November 28: A large mob at an asylum house in Nora tried to break into a room where a woman had barricaded herself along with her son. Some 30 Muslim men apparently thought the woman was in violation of Islamic sharia law, by being in Sweden unaccompanied by a man. They thought that she should therefore be raped and her teenage son killed. Asylum house staff called the police, who averted the plan.

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.

Sweden: Rampant Sexual Assaults Steam On One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Sweden: May 2016 by Ingrid Carlqvist

  • The police released a report noting that Sweden is at the top of the EU’s statistics on physical and sexual violence against women, sexual harassment and stalking. The report stated unequivocally that it is “asylum-seeker boys” and “foreign men” who commit the vast majority of the reported crimes.

  • As far as the widespread sexual assaults at public pools are concerned, the police said that in four out of five cases, the perpetrators have been “unaccompanied refugee children”.
  • A survey by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) suggested that as many as 38,000 women in Sweden may have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). Yet health care services rarely help women with the complications associated with FGM.
  • A Swedish father was told that he and his two children are being thrown out of the house they are renting from the municipality — to make room for an immigrant family.

May 4: The terrorist who turned out not to be a terrorist, but was chased by the police all over Sweden in November 2015, Mutar Muthanna Majid, demanded 1 million kronor (about $110,000) in damages from the Swedish government. However, the Chancellor of Justice decided that the standard sum for those wrongly incarcerated was enough compensation. Majid was held in custody for four days, which means he gets 12,000 kronor ($1,300).

May 4: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to the defense of Sweden’s Muslim Minister of Housing Mehmet Kaplan, who was forced to resign after his connections to Islamists and neo-Fascists were revealed, as was his defamatory comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany. According to Erdogan, however, the forced resignation of Kaplan was symptomatic for how Muslims are treated in the West: “Just look at what Sweden has done to a Muslim who reached a position in Cabinet,” Erdogan indignantly said.

May 4: It is now up to Sweden’s Supreme Court to decide if an Algerian, Karim Ageri, should be deported from Sweden after knifing a 16-year-old girl because she refused to have sex with him. November 10, 2015, two teenage Swedish girls visited an asylum house for “unaccompanied refugee children” in the Stockholm metropolitan area. Karim Ageri, who claimed to be 16 years old, groped one of the girls, who climbed out a window to get away from him. Ageri then followed her, and slashed her face twice with a knife. The prosecutor in the case argued that Ageri is at least 21 years old, and should therefore be tried as an adult and, after serving his sentence, deported. However, the Municipal Court did not agree, and sentenced the Algerian to juvenile detention. The Court of Appeals increased the sentence to 18 months in prison, followed by deportation. Prosecutor My Hedström says she is now looking forward to having the case tried by the Supreme Court, to get a precedent on how “refugee children” who commit serious crimes should be handled legally.

May 4: The National Board of Health and Welfare reported that the large number of asylum seekers who arrived in Sweden in 2015 has put a huge strain on Swedish healthcare services, especially primary care, dental care and psychiatry. Language barriers, combined with a shortage of interpreters, exacerbates the problem. Many asylum seekers have bad teeth, and 20-30% are thought to have psychiatric problems. Increased pressure on the health service has led to a shortage of hospital beds, limited availability and longer waits.

May 5: Five “unaccompanied refugee children” suspected of gross sexual coercion were apprehended, and remanded into custody. The suspects, who claim to be in their mid-teens, allegedly assaulted a young man at the asylum house where all of them were staying. The crime was initially classified as rape, but later changed to gross sexual coercion, aggravated assault and unlawful threats.

May 5: Khalid Salim Tarabeih, 20, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for child rape. According to the indictment, Tarabeih promised to buy alcohol for a 14-year-old girl, but once they were alone in a wooded area, he demanded sex in return. He told the girl he had served time for violent crimes, which scared her to the point of not daring to resist him as he raped her. Since Tarabeih is a Swedish citizen, he cannot be deported.

May 8: The Swedish media almost never reports on the violence and misogyny in immigrant-heavy areas of Sweden, but the Norwegian television channel NRK aired a story on the infamous Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, and showed how their own reporters had been attacked there. In the segment, a police officer talked about how the police are losing control of the Swedish “no-go zones,” a point that was proven by Norwegian journalists being attacked and subjected to stone throwing.

May 9: An Iraqi citizen, Hosar Mahmood, 22, has once again been convicted of rape — this time of a hospitalized woman. In 2013, he broke into an apartment, severely beat its owner, and then raped his teenage daughter. That time, Mahmood was sentenced to four years in prison for aggravated rape — but was freed after serving two-thirds of the time, as is the legal practice in Sweden. This time, the sentence was more lenient — two years and two months. He will not be deported because, the court said, he was granted permanent residency status prior to the age of 15.

May 9: The fear that Sweden is being Islamized was evident when the news broke that a new mosque is planned in Halmstad. The municipality received many angry e-mails, such as:

  • “Building mosques in Sweden means you are welcoming the murderers into your own nation.”
  • “Armed Muslims will gather in the mosques.”
  • “People will ignore the weapon laws and arm themselves if you do not stop the Muslim invasion.”

A representative of the Muslim group that wants to build the mosque told Swedish public radio: “There are many Muslims in Halmstad, and I think it is only fair they should have a mosque to go to”.

May 9: A report from the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning concluded that there is a shortage of housing in four out of five Swedish municipalities. Young people and the elderly are the worst off. The reason is the rapid population growth due to third-world asylum immigration, which is expected to continue and aggravate the problem.

May 9: A mother of three from the village of Höör opened up her home to two “unaccompanied refugee children”, and let them move into her 10-year-old daughter’s room. One of the men, Isak Andai from Eritrea, who claims he is 15 years old, then snuck into the daughter’s bed one night and started molesting her. Andai, who is believed to be significantly older than 15, was sentenced to juvenile detention and will not be deported.

May 9: A 25-year-old asylum seeker from the Congo, was remanded into custody, suspected of setting a waste bin on fire in the cottage where he was staying in Pite havsbad. The fire was extinguished, but according to the prosecution there was a great risk of it spreading. Pite havsbad is one of Europe’s largest seaside resorts, nicknamed “The Swedish Riviera.” In January 2016, its owner made a deal with the Immigration Service to house 1,000-2,000 asylum seekers, mainly in the winter months.

May 11: One of the many “unaccompanied refugee children” who have lately amused themselves by sexually attacking others at public swimming pools, was found guilty of sexually molesting three girls, aged 8-10, at a pool in Överkalix. The man, who claims he is 16 years old, was sentenced to 35 hours of community service and 16,000 kronor (about $1,800) in damages.

May 11: Södertörn Municipal Court recently sentenced a Syrian man to five years in prison, followed by deportation, for aggravated battery in Syria in 2012 and crimes against international law. Among the evidence against him was a film, where he could be seen severely beating a tied-up man. The verdict was appealed to the Court of Appeals. Once there, however, the victim emerged and said he wanted to testify, and the case was sent back to the lower court for a new trial. According to the victim, the perpetrator and he belonged to the same rebel group, and the reason for the abuse was a conflict between the men. The Municipal Court therefore rejected the charges on the crimes against international law, and convicted the Syrian only of aggravated battery. Still, the victim’s description of how he was bound and tortured for days led the court to sharpen the sentence to seven years imprisonment, deportation and damages of 268,000 kronor ($30,000).

May 13: Sweden and Morocco signed an agreement regarding the many Moroccan street children who roam the streets of Stockholm and Gothenburg — they are to be deported back to their homeland. Negotiations have been ongoing for quite some time, but did not move forward until Sweden a few months ago abruptly abandoned its plans to recognize the independent Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in Western Sahara, a region occupied by Morocco. Interior Minister Anders Ygeman, who has been responsible for the negotiations, denies that this decision had any influence on Morocco’s newfound desire to welcome back its young citizens.

May 14: Two robbers dressed in black burqas targeted a phone shop in the Stockholm suburb of Nacka, forcing the staff to hand over cell phones worth about 500,000 kronor ($55,000). The police released surveillance film from the robbery, which was not much help in identifying the robbers, as they were completely covered by the burqas.

May 16: The Stockholm District Court convicted another “Swede” of genocide in Rwanda. The 61-year-old man, now a Swedish citizen, claimed he was innocent of the charges and that the evidence against him had been fabricated. The indictment concerned five different massacres, in which around 800,000 people were murdered. The man was sentenced to life in prison. In 2013, another Rwandan, Stanislas Mbanenande, who had claimed to be a refugee but was also was sentenced to life in prison for a similar crime, was able to become a Swedish citizen.

May 16: An Eritrean man was arrested, suspected of committing a rape in a restaurant in central Stockholm. The man had previously been suspected of assaulting a woman at an Eritrean party. Those charges, however, were dropped when it became clear that it was actually the woman who had assaulted the man, injuring them both.

May 16: Green Party representative Yasri Khan, now known for refusing to shake a female television reporter’s hand, turned out to have close connections to the Islamic terror group Pulo in Thailand. Khan’s father, Samsudine Khan, also a resident of Sweden, is vice chairman for the group, which has carried out bombings and shootings against civilians and other targets deemed “legitimate.” After 13 people were killed by a bomb in March 2013, Yasri Khan commented on the deed in the Bangkok Post. He warned that the violence would continue unless the government solved the “root problems” that have created the separatist movements.

May 16: Two Roma were remanded into custody for 60 cases of theft against the elderly. The men would call senior citizens on the phone, and introduce themselves as craftsmen sent to check something in the residence. Once inside, one of the men would distract the victim, while the other would steal money and valuables. Those hesitant to let the Roma in would be threatened with hefty “fines” of several thousand kronor. The crimes were committed in a number of different cities; the Malmö police put considerable resources into tracking down the men.

May 17: A 30-year-old Arab asylum seeker was convicted of battery after flogging his wife with a belt in front of their six-year-old son. The abuse took place at an asylum house on the island of Öland, and was stopped when the staff intervened. The man was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.

May 17: Osbecksgymnasiet high school in Laholm was forced to hire extra staff to protect female students from daily inappropriate sexual advances. In a letter to the school, the girls’ parents wrote that “there is catcalling, shouting and screaming in other languages, and photographs being stealthily taken.”

Hosar Mahmood (left), 22, was convicted in May of raping a hospitalized woman, and sentenced to two years and two months. He previously served a short prison sentence for another crime in 2013, when he broke into an apartment, severely beat its owner, and then raped his teenage daughter. Right: Osbecksgymnasiet high school in Laholm was forced to hire extra staff to protect female students from daily inappropriate sexual advances, mainly by immigrant students.

May 18: The police released a report — “The current situation regarding sexual assault and proposals for action” (“Lägesbild över sexuella ofredanden samt förslag till åtgärder“), which noted that Sweden is at the top of the EU’s statistics on physical and sexual violence against women, sexual harassment and stalking. The report stated unequivocally that it is “asylum-seeker boys” and “foreign men” who commit the vast majority of the reported crimes. As far as the widespread sexual assaults at public pools are concerned, the police said that in four out of five cases, the perpetrators have been “unaccompanied refugee children”. However, in an appendix to the report, alternative theories blaming “the Nordic alcohol culture” and Sweden’s “non-traditional gender roles” are set forth.

May 18: The LLT public transport company in Luleå announced that it will be teaching classes for newly arrived migrants — on the art of riding a bus. The idea came about after some 20 Afghan “unaccompanied refugee children” ended up having a heated argument with a Somali bus driver. In other parts of Sweden, courses exist on how to take out the garbage, how to use a light switch, unlock the front door, and so on. The bus class will teach the new arrivals what bus passes and bus stops are, how they work, and other useful things.

May 18: Two brothers were sentenced respectively to three, and three-and-a-half, years in prison — as well as deportation — for people-smuggling. The brothers apparently transported five disabled people from Bulgaria to Sweden, forced them to beg on the street for up to twelve hours a day, and then took their money. During a period of five months, the brothers made at least 300,000 kronor ($33,000) from the beggars.

May 18: A study released by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet, BRÅ) showed that only one in five foreign nationals convicted of rape are sentenced to deportation. The reason given is that they are registered residents and thus thought to have a connection to Sweden. The study does not mention how the victims feel about that.

May 19: Another gang rape, this time of a minor girl, was revealed in Växjö. Four teenagers of non-Western descent were arrested for raping the girl sometime during the weekend May 7-8. No other details were given.

May 20: Four of the many Moroccan street children staying illegally in Sweden committed a particularly brutal robbery against an 87-year-old woman. The four broke into the woman’s house, held her in a stranglehold until she passed out, hitting her head hard as she fell. They then ripped rings from her fingers, severely bruising her in the process. The young men were caught and subsequently convicted, thanks to surveillance footage from a nearby subway station which tied them to the scene. One man was sentenced to five years in prison and deportation, another to juvenile detention for a year and four months. The other two claimed to be under 15, and therefore could not be tried.

May 21: A survey by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) suggested that as many as 38,000 women in Sweden may have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). Yet health care services rarely help women with the complications associated with FGM. Hayat Bihi from Somalia told the Swedish public radio, Sveriges Radio:

“When I had my health examination, no one asked me if I had been subjected to genital mutilation. It reminds me somewhat of Somalia, where nobody asks or cares about women’s health. I would wish all girls and women were asked about this.”

May 23: Youssaf Khaliif, the Somali “unaccompanied refugee child” who stabbed to death a young social worker, Alexandra Mezher, on January 25, was indicted. Ms. Mezher was working alone at the asylum house for unaccompanied children where Khaliif lived at the time of the murder. According to the prosecution, he stabbed her three times with a knife — in the back, thigh and hand. The stab in the thigh severed an artery, which caused Ms. Mezher to bleed to death before the ambulance could arrive. Youssaf Khaliif still claims he is 15 years old, but according to age tests ordered by prosecutor Linda Wiking, he is at least 18, and will therefore stand trial as an adult.

May 23: A group of Arab men who are asylum seekers have, according to witnesses, systematically sexually assaulted women traveling on a late-night bus in Umeå. One witness claims that the police initially refused to file a report on the matter, but after a large number of people complained, the police are now working actively to restore order on the buses.

May 24: A 24-year-old Palestinian, Omar Ali Abdalsalam was sentenced to life in prison and deportation for strangling his girlfriend to death in a park in Oskarshamn, in December 2015. Abdalsalam, who had previous convictions for violence against women with whom he had relationships, admitted that he had been violent to his girlfriend, but denied any intent to kill. He was also sentenced to pay damages of 350,000 kronor ($39,000) to the woman’s family.

May 24: Police officer Hanif Azizi told the daily Metro that stone throwing against police has more or less become an everyday occurrence:

“This weekend I was out working with my colleagues. On three occasions, we were subjected to stone throwing. On Friday we got a call to go to central Rinkeby, where the emergency service was trying to put out a car on fire. When the police arrived, we had stones thrown at us at two separate times.”

In Landskrona, individual police officers and the police station have received so many serious threats that the police have applied for permission to have closed-circuit television installed at the police station.

May 25: The Swedish Labor Court sentenced an Arab, Samy Makram Buchra Tawadrous, to pay 50,000 kronor ($5,500) in damages to a 19-year-old woman, who was made to sit on his lap while negotiating her salary. The woman was reluctant, but her boss insisted. He then wanted hugs and kisses, and promised to make sure that she got a raise. After the incident, the woman was afraid to go back to work, and reported her boss to the Labor Court. The man admitted what had happened, but did not feel he had done anything wrong.

May 25: Abo Raad, imam of the Gävle mosque, which is known for its hate speech and close connections to terrorists, was invited to a seminar in the Swedish Parliament. The seminar was organized by the parliamentary intergroup network against discrimination and honor violence. Parliamentarian Jonas Lundgren defended Raad’s involvement: “We invited him because, unfortunately, he is a person with certain sway over Muslims in Sweden. Also, he is a very controversial person, to say the least.”

May 26: Khurshed Karimov, a 26-year-old Muslim immigrant from Tajikistan, was indicted for the murder of his boss. According to the indictment, Karimov admitted to stabbing his employer 60 times allegedly for being an “Islamophobe.” The murderer lived in a trailer on his employer’s property, and helped him with a wide range of chores. Karimov told the police that he was in the house on January 27, when he heard his boss utter the words “f**king Muslim” and “f**king idiot,” and saying that he was going to “f**k Muslims.” After the murder, Karimov scribbled messages on the walls — “Allahu Akbar,” “France,” and “Charlie,” the latter an apparent reference to the terror attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015.

May 27: After a quick investigation, the government decided that newly arrived migrant children will be allowed to bypass the waiting lists for independent schools. This rule will be even more strictly imposed on schools with a large number of applicants, and means that Swedish children who have waited for a long time will be bypassed. Mattias Karlsson, group leader for the Sweden Democrats in the Parliament, raged against the idea:

“This says something of the state of the nation, when the responsible minister actually brags about being efficient when it comes to working out a law that discriminates against the country’s own citizens in relation to non-citizens, and when the so-called right-wing ‘opposition’ says they are happy with this. Everyone should resign!”

May 31: The Immigration Service warned that there might be some turmoil in asylum houses when the law changes on June 1. From that date, migrants who have had their asylum applications rejected will no longer be allowed free housing, nor receive any allowances. At present, this applies to 1,700 people.

May 31: The Swedish public television station Sveriges Television aired a story on the living conditions for women at asylum houses. Women only make up about a third of the residents in the country’s asylum houses; the women interviewed talked about widespread sexual abuse. One woman said: “I am afraid, and when I wake up in the morning, my heart beats so fast. I go outside, but it feels as if everyone is watching me. Eyes staring at me up and down.”

May 31: A Swedish father was told that he and his two children are being thrown out of the house they are renting from the municipality — to make room for an immigrant family. The father, Uffe Rustan, told the local paper, Mitti: “It feels as if I am worth less, even though I pay taxes and my children go to school here. If only it had been a day care center moving in or something, but you cannot put one family on the street for the benefit of another family.”

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.

Sweden: Muslim Government Minister Sacked After Making Nazi Allegations by Ingrid Carlqvis

 

  • “This is not about freedom of speech, this is about insulting people’s faith. I cannot see anything that has to do with freedom of speech here.” — Mehmet Kaplan, on the Mohammed cartoon controversy, 2005.

  • Mehmet Kaplan told Turkish media that the reason young Muslims join ISIS is “the rampaging Islamophobia in Europe.” As a solution to the problem, he suggested that the Swedish government support mosques financially, ostensibly to counteract ISIS’s recruitment.

In 2014, three Muslims became ministers in the Swedish government. Clearly the most fervent and committed believer was Mehmet Kaplan, 44, who took on the role of Minister for Housing and Urban Development.

Kaplan came to Sweden from Turkey, at the age of one. Despite many claims that he is in fact an Islamist, until now Kaplan has been untouchable. That is, until it emerged that he said that Israel treats the Palestinians the same way the Nazis treated the Jews in Germany. At a hastily summoned press conference on April 18, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven announced that he had accepted Kaplan’s resignation.

Mehmet Kaplan was a minister in Sweden’s government until last week, when he was forced to resign after revelations that he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to that of the German Nazis’ treatment of Jews. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Jan Ainali)

Kaplan, a member of the Green Party, has a history of being affiliated with various Muslim organizations connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2005, he denounced the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, for publishing cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed. In an interview with the Christian magazine Dagenhe said, “This is not about freedom of speech, this is about insulting people’s faith. I cannot see anything that has to do with freedom of speech here. This is an insupportable provocation.”

In 2010, Kaplan was aboard one of the ships of the flotilla sailing to the Gaza Strip, with the aim of breaking Israel’s naval blockade. He, along with several others, was arrested after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) boarded the vessel. Once safe and sound back in Sweden, he complained that the IDF “acted like pirates.”

In 2011, he invited the well-known Islamist and anti-Semite, Yvonne Ridley, to the Swedish parliament for a seminar. Ridley, a supporter of Hamas, has called Israel “that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East.”

Since becoming a minister in the Swedish government, Mehmet Kaplan has continued to stir up controversy. He has made several hair-raising remarks, such as, in the summer of 2014, when he compared Swedish Muslims who go to Syria to fight for the Islamic State, to Swedish volunteers fighting for Finland in the 1939 Winter War, when Finland was attacked by the Soviet Union three months into the Second World War. Under the slogan “Finland’s cause is ours,” 8,260 Swedes traveled to Finland to aid their neighbors. To compare this courageous and highly moral effort to that of murderous jihadis, willingly joining the killing machine known as ISIS, rightly upset many Swedes. When the Finnish media criticized the Swedish minister, Kaplan retreated, saying that it “was not a good comparison,” and that he was “against young Swedes joining the war in Syria.”

In the fall of 2014, it was time for the next controversial statement. Kaplan told the Turkish media that the reason young Muslims join ISIS is “the rampaging Islamophobia in Europe.” As a solution to the problem, he suggested that the Swedish government support mosques financially, ostensibly to counteract ISIS’s recruitment.

This thought evidently made Social Democrat Party member Nalin Pekgul (a Kurdish Muslim) furious. In an opinion piece for the business paper Dagens Industri, she wrote that the only reason more people did not openly criticize Kaplan was their fear of being labeled “Islamophobes”:

“Appointing Mehmet Kaplan government minister is surprising and appalling. … I am convinced that Mehmet Kaplan said exactly what he meant and that he regards the jihadis as freedom fighters. … Mehmet Kaplan says that he believes in the equal value of all human beings and equality between the sexes, but very few secular Muslims believe that he is not in fact an Islamist. With Mehmet Kaplan in the government, [Green Party leaders] Gustav Fridolin and Åsa Romson have sent a clear signal to the Muslims of Sweden — that the Islamists now have the support of the Swedish establishment.”

Social anthropologist Aje Carlbom supported Pekgul’s conclusion that Kaplan is an Islamist. In an opinion piece for the magazine Dagens Samhälle, Carlbom wrote:

“When it comes to identity politicians in general, this might seem like political mudslinging. One should be aware, however, that Kaplan has his ideological background in the Islamist movement that, for the past 20 years, has been hard at work trying to gain influence in various political arenas.”

Last week, another scandal exploded around Kaplan. It all started with the Turkish National Association of Sweden holding a meeting in central Stockholm, where Association Vice President Barbaros Leylani made a speech in which he agitated against Armenians and shouted to the audience: “The Turk awakens! The Armenian dogs should take care. Death to the Armenian dogs!”

Leylani was forced to resign from his organization, but soon pictures surfaced, taken at a Ramadan dinner in July 2015, where Mehmet Kaplan could be seen dining with Barbaros Leylani. To make matters worse, members of the Islamist organization Milli Görüs were visibly present, as were members of the Turkish ultra-nationalist, right-wing extremist organization, the Grey Wolves.

Kaplan said that he had no knowledge of their presence, and that it is his job as a politician to meet with representatives of “Turkish civil society in Sweden.” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven called Kaplan’s presence at the dinner “deeply regrettable”:

“As a government minister, one has a responsibility to act in such a way as never to raise any doubts about what organizations or values one represents. That is why it is deeply regrettable that Mehmet Kaplan ended up in this company, and he realizes now that he needs to be more meticulous.”

On Sunday, April 17, the final straw appeared. The daily Svenska Dagbladet published pictures taken by the Somali Star, a local Swedish-Somali TV station. In the segment, which aired in 2009, Mehmet Kaplan compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to that of the German Nazis’ treatment of Jews:

“There are certain similarities, which many Jews have actually testified to. The persecution in the 1930s — the persecution under Nazi Germany — against the people thought to be the most deviant, people were treated in such a way that they constantly had to explain why they had chosen a certain way of life.”

This turned out to be a bit rich, even for Sweden’s notoriously Israel-critical Foreign Minister Margot Wallström. Come Monday morning, Wallström made a statement: “I think this is an appalling statement, and I strongly denounce this.” Wallström did not want to speculate about the consequences at that point, and explained that it was up to Prime Minister Stefan Löfven to decide Kaplan’s fate.

And so Löfven did, only hours later. At a televised press conference, Löfven said that Kaplan had handed in his resignation, and that he had accepted it. There can be little doubt, however, that if it had been up to Kaplan, he would have remained at his post.

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute

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