Sweden Now Swarming With Islamist Extremists, Warns Security Chief: 'We Have Never Seen Anything Like It'
Radical Islam is now swarming Sweden, with the number of extremists growing from about 200 in 2010 to thousands in 2017, an increase of more than 1,000 percent, the country's top intelligence official has warned.
"We have never seen anything like it before," Anders Thornberg, the chief of the Swedish Security Service (Säpo), said in an interview with Swedish news agency TT, translated by TheLocal.se.
Thornberg said the Islamic State (ISIS) is largely responsible for this, having brainwashed migrants from the Middle East with their propaganda.
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"This is the 'new normal' ... It is an historic challenge that extremist circles are growing," Thornberg said.
He revealed that Säpo receives about 6,000 intelligence tips per month on radical activities, up from around 2,000 a month in 2012.
In 2012, the intelligence agency estimated that about 300 Swedes had left the country to join ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq, the Conservative Review reported.
In February, U.S. President Donald Trump was widely ridiculed in the liberal media for his "misinformed comment" on Sweden, the Daily Mail reported.
"Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers and they're having problems like they never thought possible," Trump said.
Two months later, an ISIS supporter launched a jihad attack in Stockholm, hijacking a delivery truck and running over pedestrians, killing five people and injuring 15 others.
Sweden, with a population of 9.8 million, has fewer people than the state of North Carolina, but admitted 76,145 immigrants from Asian countries in 2016, and received 162,877 applications for asylum in 2015, many of them from Muslim nations, CBN News reported.
Sweden has welcomed more migrants than any other European country based on per capita income. Last year alone, about 163,000 migrants entered Sweden, USA Today reported.
The growing problem of Muslim radicalism has reached a point that some Islamic communities in Sweden have become "no-go zones" for non-Muslims and even for the police, according to the Conservative Review.
