Sweden says Iran was behind thousands of text messages calling for revenge over Quran burnings

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Swedish authorities accused Iran on Tuesday of being responsible for thousands of text messages sent to people in Sweden calling for revenge over the burnings of Islam's holy book in 2023. Iran denied the accusation.

According to officials in Stockholm, the cyberattack was carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which hacked an SMS service and sent “some 15,000 text messages in Swedish” over the string of public burnings of the Quran that took place over several months in Sweden during the summer of 2023.

Senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said a preliminary investigation by Sweden’s SAPO domestic security agency showed “it was the Iranian state via the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, that carried out a data breach at a Swedish company that runs a major SMS service.”

The Swedish company was not named.

The Iranian Embassy in Sweden in a statement rejected the accusation as “baseless” and said it was intended to “poison” relations between Tehran and Stockholm, the official IRNA news agency reported. The embassy expects the Swedish government to prevent the spread of such statements, the report said.

In August 2023, Swedish media reported that a large number of people in Sweden had received text messages in Swedish calling for revenge against people who were burning the Quran, Ljungqvist said, adding that the sender of the messages was “a group calling itself the Anzu team.”

Swedish broadcaster SVT published a photo of a text message, saying that “those who desecrated the Quran must have their work covered in ashes” and calling Swedes “demons.”

The protests were held under the freedom of speech act, which is protected under the Swedish constitution. The rallies were approved by police. However, the incidents left Sweden torn between its commitment to free speech and its respect for religious minorities.

The clash of fundamental principles had complicated Sweden’s desire to join NATO, an expansion that gained urgency after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine but needed the approval of all alliance members.

Turkey and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had temporarily blocked Sweden's accession, citing reasons including anti-Turkish and anti-Islamic protests in Stockholm but Sweden finally became a NATO member in March.

At the time, the Swedish government said it “strongly rejects the Islamophobic act committed by individuals in Sweden,” adding that the desecrations did not reflect the country's stand.

In July last year, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement saying that “the insult to the Holy Quran in Sweden is a bitter, conspiratorial, dangerous event” and that the desecrations have “created feelings of hatred and enmity" in Muslim nations toward the people burning the Quran and their governments.

In a separate statement, SAPO’s operational manager Fredrik Hallström said Tuesday that the intent of the text messages was to "paint the image of Sweden as an Islamophobic country and create division in society.”

He accused “foreign powers" of seeking to “exploit vulnerabilities” and said they were "now acting more and more aggressively, and this is a development that is likely to escalate.” He did not name any specific country.

Meanwhile, Sweden's justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer, told Swedish news agency TT “that a state actor, in this case Iran, according to (SAPO's) assessment is behind an action that aims to destabilize Sweden or increase polarization in our country is of course very serious.”

There is no law in Sweden specifically prohibiting the burning or desecration of the Quran or other religious texts. Like many Western countries, Sweden doesn’t have any blasphemy laws.

“Since the actors are acting for a foreign power, in this case Iran, we make the assessment that the conditions for prosecution abroad or extradition to Sweden are lacking for the persons suspected of being behind the breach,“ Ljungqvist said.

Ljungqvist, who is with the Sweden's top prosecution authority, said that although the preliminary investigation has been closed, it “does not mean that the suspected hackers have been completely written off” and that the probe could be reopened.

Sweden’s domestic security agency in May accused Iran of using established criminal networks in Sweden as a proxy to target Israeli or Jewish interests in the Scandinavian country.

Iran’s Embassy in Sweden could not be reached for a comment on Tuesday.

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Associated Press writer Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this report.