Sweden’s Foreign Ministry has summoned the Iraqi ambassador after a Swedish-Iraqi citizen sentenced for terror crimes was executed in the south of Iraq.
The man, who was in his 60s, was executed by hanging, along with around 37 other suspected terrorists on Thursday.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry (UD) had protested the death sentence handed to him, and PM Stefan Löfven has now personally taken up the case with Iraq.
“We’ve had intensive consular activity since we were made aware of this. We protested the death sentence and took it up at a high level with Iraqi representatives,” UD deputy director Patric Nilsson told news agency TT.
The man was sentenced to death in 2010 for terror crimes by an Iraqi court. Iraq’s justice minister Haidar al-Zamali was reportedly at the scene when the prisoners were executed in the city of al-Nasiriyya in the south of the country, according to news agency AFP.
“I have no details, but we knew this person has been in prison in Iraq, accused of terror offences,” PM Stefan Löfven explained.
“Our position is that if you travel to another country and commit crimes, you can expect to be punished in that country. We have however also previously raised our basic opposition to the death penalty.”
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