Danish-Swedish far-right activist charged with Quran burnings: media

A Danish-Swedish far-right activist has been charged with incitement against an ethnic group and insult for desecrating a Quran in 2022, according to media reports.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority did not identify the suspect but media reports identified him as Rasmus Paludan.

The prosecution authority said in a statement that the charges are based on the accused’s hate comments against Muslims, Arabs and Africans, and the charges relate to events in Malmo in April and September 2022.

“The prosecutor has today charged a 42-year-old man with two counts of incitement to racial hatred and one insult,” it said.

"My assessment is that there are sufficient grounds to bring charges and now the district court will consider the case," senior prosecutor Adrien Combier-Hogg, who is in charge of the preliminary investigation, was quoted in the statement.

A date for a trial was not announced but it is expected to last two days.

An act of sacrilege

Paludan sparked outrage and condemnation across the Islamic world after he burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm in January 2023.

A Turkish court issued an arrest warrant for the far-right leader.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the Quran-burning provocation a “vile protest” and said, "It is not freedom of expression to insult the sacred values of Muslims.”

Türkiye’s foreign minister condemned the protest as a “heinous act.”

“It is unacceptable to allow these anti-Islamic actions under the pretext of freedom of expression. To turn a blind eye to such heinous acts is to be complicit in them,” Hakan Fidan said in a statement.