The Stockholm District Court sentenced a man to four and half years in prison and deportation for attempting to raise money for the terrorist-labelled PKK – a decision that comes less than a week before a critical Swedish-Turkish meeting on Sweden’s NATO candidacy.
According to the facts of the case, a Kurdish man of Turkish nationality in his 40s attempted to extort a Kurdish businessman in Stockholm at gunpoint to pay money to PKK – an organisation Turkey and the EU label controversially label as a terrorist organisation.
“The investigation shows, as the district court assesses it, that the PKK conducts very extensive fundraising activities in Europe using, among other things, extortion of Kurdish traders,” the court’s president, Chief Counsellor Måns Wigén, told a press conference held after the decision.
As for the man’s sentencing, the District Court decided he would be deported to Turkey after his four and a half years sentence.
Responding to a statement the Swedish Migration Board filed before the court in which it said deportation could not be carried out because the convicted Turkish national would likely face torture if sent to Turkey, Wigén confirmed the court’s deportation sentence, maintaining that the matter would be dealt with after his sentence.
No official link to NATO…
During the press conference, Wigén also emphasised that the court was not influenced by Sweden’s ongoing NATO accession bid, which has been marked by Turkey demanding Sweden take tougher action against PKK if it were to give its accession nod. Turkey and Hungary are the only states blocking Sweden’s NATO membership aspirations.
Also dissociating himself from the decision was Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Sören Folke Strömmer, who said he has no comment.
However, the timing of the decision is viewed by several observers as being quite beneficial to Sweden after the Quran burning by an Iraqi Christian immigrant earlier this month, a similar incident with a far-right extremist earlier this year, and considerable backlash from the Islamic world, including Turkey.
“Let’s just say that this verdict comes at a good time for the Swedish government,” a diplomatic source close to the case told EURACTIV.
“But despite Sweden’s repeated appeals to Ankara, it is unlikely to make a difference given the current tensions. Let’s see what happens in Vilnius,” the source added.
On Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared that he had invited Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Turkish President Erdogan to a meeting concerning next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius.
In 2022, the PKK carried out 54 attacks, killing 40 people and injuring another 150, the prosecutor in the case, Hans Ihrman, said. This makes the PKK the 11th deadliest terrorist organisation in the world, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace.
(Charles Szumski | EURACTIV.com)
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