Sweden expels imam accused of being an ISIS recruiter
An imam suspected of being a recruiter for ISIS has been deported from Sweden after a year in detention.
Ahmed Ahmed, 52, was arrested last year on suspicion of being a key figure in the radicalization and recruitment of ISIS fighters throughout Sweden, where he had worked in a number of mosques.
Swedish security services, who originally come from Iraq, expelled him last week after a judge ruled that he posed a threat to national security.
It is alleged that 14 people related to him traveled to fight for ISIS.
In a raid on his home in 2015, pictures of ISIS fighters and Osama bin Laden were found on his phone along with a picture of the Jordanian pilot who was burned alive by ISIS.
A preliminary investigation against him was dropped and the imam denied the allegations.
“I can confirm that he has been deported,” his lawyer Alparslan Tügel told the newspaper Aftonbladet.
He is one of several imams that the Swedish government has imprisoned before the deportation.
Despite the fact that the criminal charges did not go further, the investigators claimed that he had contact with most of the people in Örebro who had joined ISIS.
This is what the terrorist researcher Magnus Ranstorp tells the Swedish newspaper Doku that Mr Ahmed was a key recruiter.
– He has been important when it comes to recruitment in Örebro, but he has also worked in other cities such as Gothenburg, Stockholm and Eskilstuna, he says.
“He is a traveling radicalizer and recruiter. It is important to remove important security threats to Sweden – it will affect the security situation in the future. ”
It is understood that Iraq refused to accept Ahmed, so he was placed on a flight to Turkey and received a small sum of money, a mobile phone and a plane ticket to Iraq, his wife said. Aftonbladet.
Five top Muslim priests, including a school chancellor, were arrested after a series of raids linked to suspected extremism in Sweden in 2019.
The Swedish security service Sapo arrested three imams, the head of one of the country’s leading state-funded Islamic schools and one of the imam’s sons.
Of those arrested, the former rector of the Academy of Sciences, Abdel Nasser El Nadi, has voluntarily left Sweden to avoid deportation.
Swedish authorities have faced domestic and international criticism for not arresting and prosecuting returning ISIS fighters, and proposals that the country could be seen as a refuge for terrorists.
The crackdown comes when the Swedish government tries to introduce tougher laws against extremists.
Many of those arrested had previously been denied Swedish citizenship during the past decade.
The latest figures from Sapo reveal that at least 300 of its citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq between 2012 and 2017 to join extremist groups. It is believed that half have returned, 100 are still fighting and 50 have been killed.
Sweden is the largest exporter of ISIS fighters per capita in Europe.
Updated: January 20, 2022, 4:02 p.m.