Prosecutors in Nacka District Court on Monday charged four men with participation in a terrorist organization, after a lengthy investigation following the raid on an Islamic association and several homes in Tyresö outside Stockholm in March of this year. Three of the four also face charges of preparation for terrorist crimes and aggravated weapons offenses.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the investigation has uncovered links to the Islamic State in Somalia. “Part of the evidence consists of a person having sworn allegiance to ISIS and actively sought underage perpetrators who were to carry out attacks,” senior prosecutor Lars Hedvall said.
Wiretapped conversations reveal that the intended targets were largely Jewish, Hedvall told reporters. “They have received instructions to look for Jewish targets. That they should go to the synagogue and see what happens there, check if they have guards and the like.”
Text messages retrieved from the cell phone of one of the accused included the statement “It is time for the Jews, the Zionists, to be driven from the surface of the Earth.”
In addition to a 63-year-old Somali imam and a 21-year-old Swedish-born son of Egyptian-Moroccan immigrants, two Swedish brothers with no migrant background, aged 23 and 25, are among the accused. Charging documents say the older brother has on two occasions pledged loyalty to IS, and also received instructions from the terrorist organization to “induce perpetrators of terrorist crimes to kill as many as possible of the infidels, with Jewish targets as the main target choice.”
He has also informed IS that children are preferable as perpetrators, given the light sentences minors can expect in Sweden. The child terrorists, Aftonbladet reports, should be “prepared to die as martyrs.” The potential killing of children in the planned attacks was viewed by the brothers as acceptable “collateral damage,” the indictment says.
The two brothers attended a middle school in Tyresö with about 400 students—according to Samnytt, attended by “many immigrants.” As a 15-year-old, the older brother announced that he had converted to Islam, followed by his younger brother a few years later. This appears to have established a pattern of the older brother leading the way—into drug use and crime as well as more extreme Islamist ideas. After a trip to Morocco in 2023, the older brother started wearing Muslim clothes.
“The case has been extensive, and the suspicions involve connections to both the international terrorist organization ISIS and to serious organized crime in Sweden,” Fredrik Hallström of the Swedish security services Säpo said in a press release.
All four accused deny any criminal activity. The trial is scheduled to start on December 10th.
