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Swedish MP Amineh Kakabaveh said on Monday that four political dissidents of the Turkish administration were extradited by Sweden after a trilateral memorandum was signed by Sweden Finland and Turkey on 28 June.
The memorandum is part of a deal that secures Turkey’s support for the two Nordic countries’ accession to NATO in exchange for their assurance to prosecute and extradite Kurdish activists with alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), to not support the People’s Defence Units (YPG) in north Syria, and to end arms embargoes imposed on Turkey after its occupation of parts of north Syria in 2019.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had said on 1 July that Sweden promised to ‘deliver 73 terrorists, and they already did send three-four.’
Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson had refused to deny on 3 July that deportations to Turkey was a part of the deal.
Kakabaveh stated that some of the names in Erdoğan’s list were Kurds who had fought against the Islamic State (ISIS), and who had fled to Sweden to avoid retribution.
She said:
“There are four Turkish journalists on Erdoğan’s list that I personally know. One of them wrote on the Armenian Genocide. Another wrote in criticism of the Turkish administration. And according to Erdoğan, I am a terrorist myself.”
She continued:
“The judiciary here is not controlled by state officials like it is in the Middle East. It is under the control of legal authorities. So someone cannot be extradited just so arbitrarily. My concern is essentially for those who have not yet been granted asylum, and who are subjected to accusations. I’ve written to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and asked them to have this issue monitored.”
She added:
“I do not believe the Swedish ministry of justice who recently said that the four people extradited were not those in Erdoğan’s list. If this is true, why weren’t they extradited before? They have to let the public know the names of the people who were extradited.”
