STOCKHOLM
\nA Swedish appeals court on Monday said police had no legal grounds to block two gatherings where protesters had planned to burn the Qur\u2019an earlier this year.
\nThe burning of Islam\u2019s holy book outside Turkiye\u2019s embassy in Stockholm in January sparked anger in the Muslim world, leading to weeks of protests, calls for a boycott of Swedish goods and further stalled Sweden\u2019s NATO membership bid.
\nFollowing that incident, police refused to authorize two other requests, one by a private individual and one by an organization, to hold Qur\u2019an burnings outside the Turkish and Iraqi embassies in Stockholm in February.
\nPolice argued the January protest had made Sweden \u201ca higher priority target for attacks.\u201d
\nFollowing appeals from both protest organizers, the Stockholm Administrative Court overturned the decisions, saying the cited security concerns were not enough to limit the right to demonstrate.
\nBut Stockholm police in turn appealed the rulings to the appeals court, which on Monday sided with the lower administrative court.
\nIn both rulings \u2014 on the two separate applications \u2014 the appeals court said \u201cthe order and security problems\u201d referenced by the police did not have \u201ca sufficiently clear connection to the planned event or its immediate vicinity.\u201d
\nIt added that the ruling could be appealed to Sweden\u2019s Supreme Administrative Court.
\nSwedish police had authorized the January protest organized by Rasmus Paludan, a Swedish-Danish activist who has already been convicted for racist abuse.
\nPaludan also provoked rioting in Sweden last year when he went on a tour of the country and publicly burned copies of Islam\u2019s holy book.
\nThe January Qur\u2019an burning also damaged Sweden\u2019s relations with Turkiye, which took particular offense that police had authorized the demonstration.
\nAnkara has blocked Sweden\u2019s NATO bid because of what it perceives as Stockholm\u2019s failure to crack down on Kurdish groups it views as \u201cterrorists.\u201d
\n\u201cIt is clear that those who caused such a disgrace in front of our country\u2019s embassy can no longer expect any benevolence from us regarding their application for NATO membership,\u201d Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in January.
\nSwedish politicians have criticized the Qur\u2019an burning, but have also adamantly defended the right to freedom of expression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STOCKHOLM A Swedish appeals court on Monday said police had no legal grounds to block two gatherings where protesters had planned to burn the Qur\u2019an earlier this year. The burning of Islam\u2019s holy book outside Turkiye\u2019s embassy in Stockholm in January sparked anger in the Muslim world, leading to weeks of protests, calls for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-337207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n