Swedish court indicts teen for going to Israeli embassy with semi-automatic weapon
15-year-old claims he was given gun and was unaware taxi he was riding in was heading toward embassy; Swedes claim Iran recruiting local gang members
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – A Swedish court on Thursday found a 15-year-old boy guilty of possession of a semi-automatic weapon while heading to the Israeli embassy in Stockholm in a taxi.
The conviction came less than a month after Sweden’s intelligence agency accused Iran of recruiting gang members to attack Israeli interests in the Scandinavian country.
The boy was arrested on May 16 when police stopped a taxi in the Tyreso suburb south of Stockholm, en route to the Israeli embassy in the capital. He was carrying the gun in his jacket.
The following night, a 14-year-old boy was arrested after a shooting near the Israeli embassy. That investigation is still underway.
The 15-year-old, who was sentenced to 11 months of juvenile supervision, told the Nacka district court he had been ordered to pick up an item in Tyreso for delivery, according to the verdict obtained by AFP.
He said he thought he would collect drugs and only discovered it would be a gun on the way to pick up the item.
He said he found out he was going to the Israeli embassy when he got in the taxi, which a woman had ordered for him.
The taxi driver confirmed that a woman, whose identity has not been established, gave the driver the embassy address.
The teen told the court he felt tricked, but still went ahead with the assignment.
Prosecutors presented evidence from the boy’s smartphone showing that he had looked up the route to the embassy, and the court ruled the youth “knew that the trip was going to the embassy even if he was unable to give the taxi driver an address.”
The fact that the weapon was discovered en route to the embassy meant “the weapon typically could be feared to be used criminally,” the court said.
However, the ruling emphasized that there was “no investigation in the case about what was actually planned to happen” that night. It was not known why the police stopped the taxi.
Sweden’s intelligence agency, Sapo, on May 30 accused Iran of recruiting gang members in Sweden, some of them children, as proxies to commit “acts of violence against other states, groups or people in Sweden that it considers a threat.”
It cited in particular “Israeli and Jewish interests, targets and operations in Sweden.”
According to Sapo, Iran has conducted “security-threatening activities in and against Sweden for several years.”
On January 31, police found a live grenade in the grounds of the Israeli compound.
Sweden has seen a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents since the October 7 Hamas onslaught, which saw terrorists infiltrate Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251.
A total of 110 complaints were registered by police between October 7 and December 31, according to the report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. In 2022, the figure was 24.
Anti-Israel sentiments were also prominent when the Scandinavian country hosted the Eurovision song competition last month, as protesters demonstrated against Israeli contestant Eden Golan, who was booed during her performances.