Iran holds off sending ambassador to Sweden in protest over Quran incident
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People protesting outside the Swedish embassy in Teheran on June 30, two days after a man burned a copy of the Quran in Stockholm.
PHOTO: REUTERS
DUBAI – Iran will refrain from sending a new ambassador to Sweden in protest over the burning of a Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm,
A man tore up and burned a Quran outside Stockholm’s central mosque last Wednesday, the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holidays.
Swedish police charged the man who burned the holy book with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In a newspaper interview, he described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban it.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned Sweden’s charge d’affaires on Thursday to condemn what it said was an insult to the most sacred Islamic sanctities.
“Although administrative procedures to appoint a new ambassador to Sweden have ended, the process of dispatching them has been held off due to the Swedish government’s issuing of a permit to desecrate the Holy Quran,” Mr Amir-Abdollahian said on Twitter on Sunday.
He did not specify how long Iran would refrain from sending an ambassador to Sweden.
While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Quran demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed freedom of speech.
In its permit for Wednesday’s demonstration, Swedish police said that while it “may have foreign policy consequences”, the security risks and consequences linked to a Quran burning were not of such a nature that the application should be rejected. REUTERS
