Swedish intelligence services announced that they were lowering the level of readiness for a terrorist threat from "critical" to "high", as they believe the risk of an attack has decreased, Agence France-Presse reported, BTA reported.
The Swedish Security Service (SSS/SEPO) raised the level in August 2023. to a four-point scale following anti-Swedish protests in Muslim countries following the burning of the Koran in Sweden.
"Propaganda against Sweden has subsided and the country is not explicitly mentioned as a target", Fredrik Hallström, the agency's chief of operations, told a press conference.
"We are not seeing the same intense flow of threats of attacks against Sweden", he added. However, he stressed that "at a high threat level, a terrorist attack is possible".
In the summer of 2023, the burning of the Koran by Iraqi Christian Salvan Momica caused outrage in the Muslim world. Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries deteriorated, and in July 2023 Iraqi demonstrators twice stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, setting the building on fire on the second occasion.
Salvan Momica was charged with inciting ethnic hatred and was shot dead in an apartment in January, hours before the court was due to pronounce its verdict against him.
The other defendant in the case, Salvan Najem, also an Iraqi, was found guilty of inciting ethnic hatred for burning four Qurans in 2023. Despite the threat level being lowered, the director of the Swedish National Security Service, Charlotte von Essen, stressed that "Sweden is in a difficult security situation".
"The most difficult in many years," von Essen added to the media, referring to the war in Ukraine. "Foreign powers - and especially Russia - are conducting large-scale activities that threaten security in Sweden and are directed against Sweden," she noted.