Sweden Says Iran was Behind Thousands of Text Messages Calling for Revenge over Quran Burnings

A Swedish man of Iraqi descent burns a copy of the Quran in front of a mosque in Stockholm. (AFP)
A Swedish man of Iraqi descent burns a copy of the Quran in front of a mosque in Stockholm. (AFP)
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Sweden Says Iran was Behind Thousands of Text Messages Calling for Revenge over Quran Burnings

A Swedish man of Iraqi descent burns a copy of the Quran in front of a mosque in Stockholm. (AFP)
A Swedish man of Iraqi descent burns a copy of the Quran in front of a mosque in Stockholm. (AFP)

Swedish authorities accused Iran on Tuesday of being responsible for thousands of text messages that were sent to people in the Scandinavian country calling for revenge over the burnings of the Quran in 2023.
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 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 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. There was no immediate comment from Iranian authorities on the accusations from Sweden.
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.
Also in 2023, an Iraqi citizen living in Sweden set a copy of the Quran alight in front of the capital's largest mosque.



Putin Aide Accuses West of Trying to Isolate Russia’s Kaliningrad Exclave

Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev attends a meeting of the collegium of the Prosecutor General's office in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2023. Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via Reuters/File Photo
Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev attends a meeting of the collegium of the Prosecutor General's office in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2023. Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via Reuters/File Photo
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Putin Aide Accuses West of Trying to Isolate Russia’s Kaliningrad Exclave

Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev attends a meeting of the collegium of the Prosecutor General's office in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2023. Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via Reuters/File Photo
Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev attends a meeting of the collegium of the Prosecutor General's office in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2023. Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via Reuters/File Photo

An aide to President Vladimir Putin accused the West on Friday of trying to isolate Russia's European exclave of Kaliningrad as much as possible by restricting the supply of goods to it by road and rail.

Kaliningrad, an exclave on the Baltic coast sandwiched between NATO and European Union members Lithuania and Poland, is home to Russia's Baltic Fleet. EU sanctions imposed on Moscow over its war in Ukraine ban the transport of certain goods there.

Nikolai Patrushev, an adviser to Putin known for his hawkish views on the West, visited Kaliningrad on Friday where he complained that 80% of goods which he said were essential for the exclave could not be brought by land.

"The countries of the West are trying to complicate cargo and passenger transit to Kaliningrad to the maximum extent in order to isolate the Kaliningrad region and to disrupt transport links with the main territory of Russia," the state TASS news agency quoted Patrushev as saying.

He was quoted as saying Russia had been forced to supply the exclave with much of what it needed by sea, including on a ferry which operates between Kaliningrad and a port in the Leningrad region.

Work was underway to move the transit of diesel fuel, cement, and other materials to a specialized tanker fleet, he added, while two rail and road ferries were being built to try to improve transport links.

Those vessels were due to be completed in 2028, Patrushev was quoted as saying by TASS.