Diplomatic relations at their worst. The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was set on fire before dawn on Thursday July 20 during a demonstration organized by supporters of the turbulent religious leader Moqtada Sadr, noted an Agence France-Presse correspondent, before a new event in Sweden where a copy of the Koran must be burned.
Iraqi riot forces used water cannons to ward off protesters. Security forces also chased protesters with electric batons to drive them away from the Swedish Embassy and force them to disperse, the Agence France-Presse photographer said. Protesters responded with stone throwing.
The assault on the embassy in Baghdad comes as Swedish police cleared a mini-rally on Thursday outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm. The organizer plans to burn a copy of the Koran as well as the Iraqi flag.
Staff at the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad are “safe”, the Swedish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday after the building burned down. “We are aware of the situation. Our embassy staff [in Iraq] are safe and the ministry is in regular contact with them,” the ministry said in an email following the incidents in Baghdad.
“Iraqi authorities are responsible for protecting diplomatic missions and their personnel,” he added, stressing that attacks on embassies and diplomats “constitute a grave violation of the Vienna Convention.”
The ministry would not confirm whether or not these events were linked to a planned rally outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., during which the organizer plans to burn a Koran and the Iraqi flag.
“We didn’t wait for the morning, we entered at dawn, we burned down the Swedish embassy,” a young protester in Baghdad told Agence France-Presse on Thursday, before chanting “Moqtada Moqtada Moqtada” after an influential religious leader.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the protester said “children of the Sadrist movement” acted after Salwan Momika was again given permission to “protest to burn the Koran” in Sweden.
Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee in Sweden and organizer of the event scheduled for Thursday according to Swedish media, had already burned a few pages of a copy of the Koran on June 28 in front of the largest mosque in Stockholm during the day of Eid al-Adha, a holiday celebrated by Muslims around the world. This first incident prompted supporters of Moqtada Sadr, an influential religious leader and troublemaker in Iraqi politics, to storm the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on June 29.
Sweden announced on Thursday July 20 the summoning of the Iraqi charge d’affaires after the invasion and burning of its embassy in Baghdad in connection with the burning of a Koran planned for the day in the Swedish capital.
“What happened is completely unacceptable and the government condemns these attacks in the strongest possible terms,” ??Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said.
Iraq has threatened to sever diplomatic ties with Sweden if another burning of the Koran takes place, the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Chia al-Soudani said in a statement on Thursday, after protesters set fire to the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.
“The Iraqi government informed the Swedish government yesterday, through diplomatic channels, that it would be heading towards a severance of diplomatic relations with Sweden in the event of another Quran burning,” the prime minister’s office warned in a statement, following a meeting with security officials.
