STOCKHOLM: The far-right Sweden Democrats on Tuesday demanded a debate in parliament on Islamic extremism following the weekend’s twin blasts in Stockholm that probably aimed to wreak carnage among Christmas shoppers.
“The Sweden Democrats demand a current debate in parliament about violence-prone Islamic extremism,” said the party, which won its first parliamentary seats in September.
“The party proposes that the debate, due to large public interest, be held as soon as possible,” it added in a statement.
The suggestion came just days after a man strongly believed to have been Taymour Abdelwahab carried out the first-ever suicide bombing in Sweden.
He was carrying a cocktail of explosives, and is believed to have mistakenly set off a small explosion near a crowded pedestrian street.
He killed himself before he could carry out what, according to the lead prosecutor on the case, appears to have been a mission to murder “as many people as possible.”
Abdelwahab, who was known for his outspoken views in favour of violent jihad, was the only person killed when some of the explosives he was carrying detonated, but two others were injured when his car exploded nearby minutes earlier.
“There is today a large public interest in a debate around these questions. People want to know how we as politicians look at Islamic extremism and what the preventive work looks like,” Jimmy Aakesson, the head of the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, said in the statement.
In addition to the bombing, several recent events made such a debate pertinent, he said, pointing to last week’s jail sentences handed down to two Swedes for “planning terrorist crimes” in Somalia, and to an intelligence report to be published Wednesday on violent Islamic extremists in the Scandinavian country.
“It is my hope that we can have this debate in parliament before Christmas,” Aakesson said.
