A court in Stockholm convicted a Kurdish man who holds Turkish citizenship of attempted terrorist financing on Thursday, in a first after the Nordic country updated its terrorism laws.
The man in his 40s was first arrested in January after firing shots outside a restaurant in the Swedish capital. He was threatening a Kurdish businessman to pay money to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), AFP cited district judge Måns Wigén as saying in a statement.
The man, whose identity has not been made public, will appeal the ruling and does not accept charges of financing terrorism, his lawyer told reporters. Unless the ruling is overturned, he will face four and a half years in prison, followed by deportation.
Thursday’s conviction is the first time financing terrorism charges were used against the PKK, an armed group that remains in a decades-long conflict with Turkey. Similar sentences have been issued to persons affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS), which the European Union designates terrorist as it does the PKK.
Sweden updated its laws against terrorism last year, after Turkey accused it of leniency and harbouring terrorists as part of its reason to veto the country’s bid to join NATO.
Turkey approved Finland’s NATO bid in March, more than 10 months after the two countries decided to end centuries of non-alignment in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
Hungary also ended its veto of Finland, but says it will back Sweden’s bid after Turkey does so, Bloomberg reported.
In late June, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeated Ankara’s demands for further crackdown on the Kurdish diaspora and pro-Kurdish demonstrations in Sweden in order to lift the final veto.
Sweden’s legislative amendments would hold little meaning “as long as PKK supporters freely hold demonstrations in this country”, Erdoğan said in a phone call with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who had been hopeful for the ratification for Sweden’s membership before the bloc’s Vilnius summit next week.