International terrorism investigators say they are finding an increase in links to Sweden in their terror investigations.
Since the 2015 Paris Bataclan massacre, European Union member states have seen increased cooperation among law enforcement and intelligence agencies to combat terror. According to prosecutor Solveig Wollstad, Sweden’s National Representative of Eurojust, more and more cases are linked to Sweden in some way, SVT reports.
“There may be suspected terrorists who have been in close contact with Sweden, it could be people who have lived in Sweden, for example, there may have been money flowing through Sweden, or a connection in some other way,” Wollstad said.
Through Eurojust alone since 2015, various kinds of data from Sweden has been requested in at least 40 separate terrorist investigations. “We get more requests, about connections to Sweden and it does not have to lead to anything, but it may also be that there is information in Sweden that you want to share from other countries,” Wollstad noted.
Expert: Sweden Has Become a ‘Base’ for International Radical Islamic Extremist Networks https://t.co/A8mntXLKwX
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 13, 2018
Wollstad also said that part of the reason for the increase is likely due to better cooperation overall across Europe when it comes to terrorism investigations saying: “We did not see this with the truck attacks a couple of years ago, with Berlin and Nice and then Stockholm and other places; it was a rather unknown phenomenon before. The more you cooperate and exchange information, the more you can coordinate and be prepared.”
The prosecutor’s comments come after researcher Peder Hyllengren of the Swedish Defence College claimed that Sweden was becoming a base for international radical Islamic terrorism.
Hyllengren set some of the blame for the growth of radical Islamism on political correctness saying: “You risk being identified as racist in a way that you did not see in other European countries. There, this question was as uncontroversial as the importance of combating Nazism and right-wing extremism. But in Sweden, it took a long time before we could discuss jihadism in the same way that we discussed Nazism.”
Swedish politicians on the left have made several controversial statements in regard to jihadists, including Alice Bah Kuhnke who said that Sweden should integrate returning Islamic State jihadists.
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