It’s been a busy week in the press for Sweden. Here are two examples, both from Gulf News.
Sweden demands quick inquiry into slaying of journalist in Somalia:
Sweden’s foreign minister urged Somalia’s authorities to speedily investigate the slaying last week of a Swedish journalist at an Islamist rally in Mogadishu.
Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson deplored the violence that has shaken the African nation, according to comments published on Monday.
Eliasson condemned the fatal shooting of veteran cameraman Martin Adler, and said that he has pressed the Somali authorities on the killing.
“What happened was terrible, it has deeply disturbed me,” Eliasson was quoted as saying by Sweden’s largest newspaper, Aftonbladet.
Adler was shot in the back by an unknown assailant while covering a rally on Friday in Mogadishu in support of the Islamist leaders who control the Somali capital and most of the country’s south.
The shooter has not been caught, but the militia said the killing was planned by a foreign enemy that wants to shatter weeks of relative peace since the Islamists took over.
Somalis marked the 46th anniversary of the end of British rule quietly in Mogadishu on Monday, fearing Islamist militants would frown on celebrations.
In past years, public events were held in Mogadishu and other towns to mark the end of British rule over northern Somalia.
Italy, which ruled over the rest of Somalia, left the country in July 1960, and both parts merged to form the Republic of Somalia.
‘Bomb belt’ removed from man’s waist in Sweden:
A Swedish bomb squad removed a device from around the waist of a man who claimed he was abducted and forced to wear a remote-controlled bomb, police said yesterday.
Officers evacuated buildings and blocked off streets in the northern Stockholm suburb of Tensta after the man claimed he was wearing a bomb belt. The bomb squad removed the device after six hours, police officer Diana Sundin said.
Sundin, who spoke over the telephone from the scene, said the device was taken to be detonated in a safe area. She could not confirm whether it was a genuine bomb. The man, in his late 20s, was taken to hospital and would be questioned by police, she added.
Police had arrived at the scene before noon Sunday, after members of the public reported seeing the man, police spokesman Stefan Larsson said.
About 30 officers surrounded the man and police cleared a 400-metre radius around him. Some 100 residents were evacuated from nearby buildings.
Sundin, who briefly approached and talked to the man herself, said he told police he had managed to escape from an apartment building after being held captive there for three days.
He wore a black box fastened around the waist, with wires sticking out, she said, adding that he looked frightened and was sweating profusely.
“It looked real to me,” Sundin said. A subsequent police search of an apartment there uncovered material which police would investigate further, she said.
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