Swedish police said on Tuesday they had apprehended one person in the Stockholm area on suspicion of preparing terrorist crimes in a case concerning violent Islamist extremism.
The person was suspected of preparation for a terrorist offense, aggravated participation in a terrorist organization, preparation for attempted murder and preparing to violate legislation on the use of explosives, police said. The investigation was not linked to any previously ongoing cases, police said in a statement.
Police conducted the operation in the capital area on Tuesday morning and the arrest unfolded calmly, they added, without identifying the suspect or giving details on the potential target.
In 2023, Sweden raised its terrorism alert to the second-highest level and warned of threats against Swedes at home and abroad after public burnings of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, outraged Muslims and triggered threats from jihadists.
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Also on Tuesday, a court in Stockholm convicted a Swedish woman of genocide, crimes against humanity and gross war crimes committed in Syria in 2015 against women and children of the Yazidi religious minority, sentencing her to 12 years in prison. The woman, identified as 52-year-old Iraqi born, Lina Ishaq, returned to Sweden in 2020 and is currently serving time for other offenses committed in Syria.
"The crimes constitute an exceptionally serious violation, not only of the life and integrity of specific individuals but also of fundamental human values and humanity," Stockholm's district court said in its verdict on Tuesday. "The woman kept them imprisoned and treated them as her property by holding them as slaves for a period of, in most cases, five months," the court said.
Around 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined IS in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to Sweden's intelligence service Sapo.
Islamic State controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017, before being defeated in its last bastions in Syria in 2019. It viewed the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority, as devil worshippers and killed more than 3,000 of them, as well as enslaving 7,000 Yazidi women and girls and displacing most of the 550,000-strong community from its ancestral home in northern Iraq.
"Through her actions, the woman upheld the imprisonment and the enslavement of the injured parties initiated by IS (Islamic State)," the court said of Ishaq. Her lawyer Mikael Westerlund told Reuters that Ishaq still denied the charges and would consider an appeal.