Iraqis breach Sweden mission in Koran fury

BAGHDAD—Iraqi protesters breached Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, angered by a Koran burning outside a Stockholm mosque that sparked condemnation across the Muslim world.

A crowd of supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr stayed inside the compound for about 15 minutes, then left as security forces deployed, an AFP photographer said.

“Our constitution is the Koran,” read a message on leaflets carried by the protesters, and a message sprayed on the compound’s gate said “Yes, yes to the Koran”.

The protest came a day after an Iraqi citizen living in Sweden, Salwan Momika, 37, stomped on the Islamic holy book and set several pages alight in front of the capital’s largest mosque.

Swedish police had granted him a permit in line with free-speech protections, but authorities later said they had opened an investigation over “agitation”.

“Within 10 days I will burn the Iraqi flag and the Koran in front of Iraq’s embassy in Stockholm,” Momika told a Swedish newspaper late Thursday.

The Koran burning, coinciding with the start of the Muslim Eid al-Adha and the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, sparked anger across and beyond the Middle East.

Iraq’s foreign ministry condemned Sweden’s decision to grant an “extremist” permission to burn the Koran and said such acts “inflame the feelings of Muslims around the world and represent a dangerous provocation”.

Late Thursday, the Iraqi foreign ministry said it had summoned the Swedish ambassador to Baghdad to inform her of the country’s “strong protest” over the authorisation decision. AFP