Malmo Anti-Semitic Crimes Go Unpunished: Report
No Justice: Swedish Jews gather at scene of bombing at Jewish center in Malmo. Image by getty images
Despite a record number of complaints about hate crimes in the Swedish city of Malmo, not a single person was convicted of such offenses in over two years, according to a recent report.
The local daily Sydsvenskan on Jan. 7 reported that in 2010 and 2011, the Swedish court system did not convict anyone of hate crimes despite a record-number of 480 complaints about such incidents reported in those years.
In total, only 16 cases formed the basis for an indictment, none of them over anti-Semitic behavior.
Approximately 700 Jews live in Malmo, amid tens of thousands of immigrants from Muslim countries. The Jewish community’s leaders say a few dozen anti-Semitic attacks occur here annually.
Unidentified individuals detonated an explosive charge in front of the Malmo Jewish Community Center in October and broke the building’s door. Police have no suspects in connection with the attack.
According to members of the community, most anti-Semitic attacks are perpetrated by Muslims, though Malmo Mayor Ilmar Reepalu has denied this.
He advised Jews who want to be safe in Malmo to reject Zionism, which he listed along with anti-Semitism as an unacceptable phenomenon. Reepalu has also said the Jewish community had been “infiltrated” by anti-Muslim agents.
Hannah Rosenthal, the United States former special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, last year accused Reepalu of not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism.
According to Sydsvenskan, a total of 4,590 hate crimes were reported to the police in the whole of Sweden in 2012.
Hate crimes are not a punishable category in the Swedish penal code but are considered an aggravating circumstance that can lead to tougher sentencing.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
