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IMMIGRATION

Net rumours lead to anti-refugee egg attack

A group of right-wing extremists demonstrated outside a housing facility for unaccompanied refugee children near Stockholm after internet rumours about a suspected sexual assault spiraled out of control.

Police have launched a preliminary investigation into a suspected case of agitation against ethnic groups (hets mot folkgrupp) after a group of right-wing activists screamed racial slurs and threw eggs at the refugee housing facility in Solna, north of Stockholm.

“Outside the refugee facility they screamed ‘blackheads’ [svartskallar] and ‘go home immigrants’ and other things,” police spokesperson Diana Sundin told the magasine Expo, which tracks right-wing extremism.

Police spokesperson Marie-Louise Nilsson from Stockholm’s western district, while refusing to confirm who was behind the action, confirmed for the TT news agency that around 30 people, primarily men, arrived at the facility in their cars.

They were carrying signs and threw eggs at the building, in addition to screaming racial slurs, but left the scene once police arrived.

The attack on the refugee housing facility, which took place on Saturday, comes following accusations that residents at the facility had sexually molested girls at a nearby public pool.

A week prior to the incident, 18 teenage boys and 2 staff members from the facility visited the Husbybadet public pool.

During the visit, five to seven of the boys allegedly molested three young girls, aged 11 and 12 years old, the Aftonbladet newspaper reported.

“They were touched on the back, legs, and behind. No clothes were removed,” police spokesperson Diana Sundin told the newspaper, adding that the boys were quickly separated from the girls when the incident took place.

The boys were subsequently reported to police on suspicions of sexual molestation.

In the days following the incident, however, the boys’ alleged crimes became wildly exaggerated on a number of internet discussion forums.

Blogs and chat sites described a “gang rape of an 11-year-old girl, carried out by 20 men”, a description which police emphatically reject.

“The whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. No one was raped. No one has said anything like that during interviews or in the report, but such rumours have started to spread on the internet,” the police’s Mats Eriksson told Aftonbladet.

According to Expo, the action was carried out by white-power activists from the Nordisk Ungdom (‘Nordic Youth’).

On the group’s website are film clips and photos taken at what the Nordisk Ungdom call a “Protest action against rapists”.

“This is to protest against the anti-Swedish and reckless sexual assault carried out by so called refugee children at the Husbybadet in Stockholm last Sunday against a 11-year-old Swedish girls,” writes the group.

Now police fear the activists are planning new attacks against the facility.

“The whole thing has gone way out of proportion. Now there are rumours they plan to take another run at the facility,” the police’s Nilsson told the TT news agency.

As a result, police have increased surveillance around the facility. Johanna Hållén a spokesperson with facility operator Attendo Care, said the incident has affected the refugee children living there.

“Clearly they think it’s unpleasant,” she told Expo.

So far no one has been informed that they are suspected of any crime following Saturday’s egg attack on the facility and police continue to investigate the matter.

CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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