Swedish embassy in Baghdad stormed, set alight over Quran burning plans

Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in central Baghdad early on Thursday, scaling its walls and setting it ablaze in protest against the expected burning of a Quran in Sweden.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said embassy staff were safe but that Iraqi authorities had failed in their responsibility to protect the embassy in accordance with the Vienna Convention, Reuters reported.

“What has happened is completely unacceptable and the government strongly condemns these attacks,” he said in a statement. “The government is in contact with high-level Iraqi representatives to express our dismay.”

Thursday’s demonstration was called by supporters of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Sadr to protest the second planned Quran burning in Sweden in weeks, according to posts in a popular Telegram group linked to the influential cleric and other pro-Sadr media.

Sadr, one of Iraq’s most powerful figures, commands hundreds of thousands of followers, whom he has at times called to the streets, including last summer when they occupied Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and engaged in deadly clashes.

Finnish news agency STT reported that the Finnish embassy, which is in part of the same enclosure as the Swedish, had also been evacuated but that staff were safe and unhurt.

Swedish police on Wednesday granted an application for a public meeting outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday, the police permit showed, and two people were expected to participate.

Swedish news agency TT reported that the two planned to burn the Quran and the Iraqi flag at the public meeting, and the duo included a man who had set a Quran on fire outside a Stockholm mosque in June.

Swedish police denied several applications earlier this year for protests that were set to include burning the Quran, citing security concerns. Courts have since overturned the police’s decisions, saying such acts are protected by the country’s far-reaching freedom of speech laws.

The Swedish government said this month it is considering changing the law to allow police to stop people from setting the Quran on fire in public if they endangered Sweden’s security.

A series of videos posted to the Telegram group, One Baghdad, showed people gathering around the Swedish embassy around 1 a.m. on Thursday chanting pro-Sadr slogans and storming the embassy complex around an hour later.

Videos later showed smoke rising from a building in the embassy complex and protesters standing on its roof.

Iraq’s foreign ministry also condemned the incident and said in a statement the Iraqi government had instructed security forces to carry out a swift investigation, identify perpetrators and hold them to account.

By dawn on Thursday, security forces had deployed inside the embassy and smoke rose from the building as firefighters extinguished stubborn embers, according to Reuters witnesses.