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German police on Tuesday arrested two suspected Islamic State supporters who are accused of planning to attack the Swedish parliament.
Two Afghan nationals, named by authorities as Ibrahim M. G. and Ramin N., were arrested in the state of Thuringia, according to a statement from Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General.
“The accused have been supporters of the ideology of the foreign terrorist group ‘Islamic State (IS)’ since at least 2023,” the statement said.
Prosecutors said Ibrahim M. G. was tasked by the Islamic State Khorasan Province group with retaliating against Quran-burning incidents in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, which inflamed tensions in Muslim-majority countries.
The “concrete” plans, which involved both accused co-conspirators, included a firearms attack on police officers and others “in the vicinity of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm,” prosecutors said, adding that the men “researched the local conditions around the possible crime scene on the internet and tried several times, albeit unsuccessfully, to obtain weapons.”
The men are also accused by prosecutors of collecting €2,000 in donations intended to help Islamic State members imprisoned in northern Syria.
A wave of Quran burnings rocked Sweden over the last couple of years, leading to protests and rioting.
Islamic State Khorasan Province emerged in 2014 and has become increasingly influential in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2021, following the withdrawal of American forces from the region.
Denis Leven is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.
