It also enabled Swedes with an immigrant background to travel to the areas affected by the Syrian and Iraq civil war, with relative ease given they would have possessed knowledge of the language and customs.
[4] This gap in values resulted in national headlines when the feminist organization "Varken Hora eller kuvad" presented a survey conducted amongst youths within immigrant dominated areas of Sweden - in which slightly over 10% said they sympathized with ISIS.
[7] The terrorism expert, Magnus Norell, stated in an interview with Dagens Nyheter that religious motivation, as well as seeing the war in Syria and Iraq within a larger whole as an ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims, motivated minority Swedes with immigrant background to join the terrorist group and that ISIS is judged by its sympathizers to be a better alternative, compared to other local political actors within the middle east who are perceived as enemies of Islam.
[12] The Swedish public broadcasting, SVT, reported that those who had returned from serving violent Islamist groups in other countries constitute an ongoing threat to Sweden.
The defense attorney Thomas Olsson told the Swedish public broadcaster, SVT that the current legal framework lacked almost all potency in fighting terrorism.
The lawyers Sten De Geer and Kjell Jönsson, have stated in a joint opinion piece that foreign fighters can and should be prosecuted on the charges of aiding terrorism.
Meaning that the current doctrine of only seeking to punish those who have admitted or can be proven to have committed concrete violent actions is not the only or definitive interpretation of Swedish law.
[15] The organization "Demokrati och upprättelse" established itself in late 2019 as an activist group working for the prosecution of all foreign fighters who joined ISIS.
[18] The Swedish-Arabic doctor Nemam Ghafouri is known for traveling to ISIS-controlled territories in order to help smuggle out captives held as slaves, saving them at his personal risk.
[20] The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority also reported that almost all known Jihadist foreign fighters traveling from Sweden have committed welfare fraud, receiving government benefits on false premises during their time within the conflict zone.