COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Sweden says Iran was behind thousands of text messages sent to people in the Scandinavian country calling for revenge for the burnings of the Quran, the holy book of Islam in 2023.
Authorities in Stockholm claim that Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards carried out a “data breach” and managed to send “approximately 15,000 text messages in Swedish” during a series of public burnings of the Quran.
Chief Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said a preliminary investigation conducted by Sweden’s domestic security agency SAPO showed that “it was the Iranian state through the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, that committed a data breach at a Swedish company that runs a major SMS service.”
The Swedish company was not named. There was no immediate comment from Iranian authorities on Sweden’s allegations.
In August 2023, Swedish media reported that a large number of people in Sweden had received text messages in Swedish calling for revenge on people who burned the Quran, Ljungqvist said, adding that the sender of the messages was “a group calling itself the Anzu team.”
The protests were held under the Freedom of Speech Act, which is protected by the Swedish constitution. The demonstrations were sanctioned by the police.
However, the incidents left Sweden torn between freedom of expression on the one hand and respect for religious minorities on the other.
In a separate statement, SAPO operations manager Fredrik Hallström said the intention of the text messages was to “paint the image of Sweden as an Islamophobic country and create divisions in society.”
He accused “foreign powers” of trying to exploit vulnerabilities and said they were “now acting more aggressively, and this is a development that is likely to escalate.”
There is no law in Sweden that specifically prohibits the burning or desecration of the Qur’an or other religious texts. Like many Western countries, Sweden has no blasphemy laws.
“Given that the perpetrators are acting on behalf of a foreign power, in this case Iran, we believe that the conditions for prosecution abroad or extradition to Sweden are lacking for the persons suspected of being behind the infringement,” Ljungqvist said.
Ljungqvist, who works at Sweden’s highest prosecutor’s office, said that while the preliminary investigation has been closed, this “does not mean that the suspected hackers have been completely written off” and that the investigation could be reopened.
The Swedish Internal Security Service in May accused Iran of using established criminal networks in Sweden as a proxy to attack Israeli or Jewish interests in the Scandinavian country.
