Swedish court remands man over mosque blaze
- World
- Anadolu Agency
- Published Date: 12:00 | 29 September 2017
- Modified Date: 05:13 | 29 September 2017
A 20-year-old man was remanded in custody on Friday over an arson attack which gutted a Swedish mosque earlier this week.
According to Swedish state television SVT, the suspect -- reportedly of El Salvadoran-origin -- was accused of "arson and hate crime".
The mosque in the southern Swedish city of Orebro was completely destroyed on Tuesday.
No one was injured in the blaze, Orebro fire chief Ulf Jacobsen said, adding that evidence pointed to it being an arson attack.
Swedish firefighters arrived at the site at 2 a.m. local time (0000GMT) but the mosque was completely gutted, according to Jacobsen.
The Orebro mosque -- which had capacity for 250 people -- was built in 2007 in the Vivalla neighborhood, home to Muslims from various countries.
The incident came after another suspected arson attack last May partially destroyed a Shia mosque in the Stockholm suburb of Jakobsberg.
An investigation by the Islamic Cooperation Council in Sweden revealed in 2015 that seven out of 10 mosques in the country had been attacked.