On Dec. 18, 2001, two men, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammad El Zari, were picked up by police and rushed to a plane to be sent back to Egypt against their will. The Swedish government claimed they were leaders of a “terrorist” organization. No reason or evidence for this claim was ever given to the men or their lawyers. The two had sought political asylum in Sweden.

Critics accused the Swedish government of violating agreements in the European Union and other international agreements signed by Stockholm, according to which no person is to be deported if they risk being subject to torture or execution. Swedish officials justified their actions by referring to an agreement with Cairo assuring that Agiza and El Zari would not suffer such a fate.

Initial reports that the men were being tortured came out a few weeks after their deportation, but Stockholm has dismissed them as untrue. In a report requested by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Swedish officials wrote on May 6, 2003, that they had received no information making them doubt that the men were treated according to the agreement with the government in Egypt.

The TV program reported that just hours after the government issued its summary decision to deport the two men, the SÄPO—Sweden’s CIA—arrested and expelled them. They were not allowed to contact their families or lawyers. Their attorneys were informed about the action by mail two days later, when the two men had already been deported.

On May 17 and 24, the weekly TV program “Cold Facts” presented eyewitnesses and documents indicating that the U.S. secret police had demanded a speedy deportation of the two men.  
 
Hooded and handcuffed
One eyewitness interviewed on the TV program said he had seen the two arrested men being taken to the police station at Bromma airport in Stockholm by “six to eight Americans.” Handcuffed and shackled, they were forced to wear hoods and their clothes taken away and replaced by diapers and overalls. Guarded by two Swedish secret police, they were put in a special harness in a plane leased by the U.S. government and flown to Egypt, reports Amnesty International.

In a May 18 interview, Hans Dahlgren, Swedish undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, tried to invoke the specter of a “terrorist” threat, saying, “We must not forget why these two persons were deported. They were considered to have leading positions in a notorious terrorist organization and there were suspicions they were preparing further terrorist attacks from Sweden.”

As more facts came out, however, Stockholm felt compelled to send former deputy prime minister Lena Hjelm-Wallén on a short visit to Egypt to “discuss the guarantees the Egyptian government had given,” as she put it.

In April Agiza was summarily tried by an Egyptian military court and sentenced to life on the charge of being a member of a “terrorist” organization. Swedish officials now say the military trial against Agiza was not fair. According to Dahlgren, however, the Swedish government is not to blame. “It is not Sweden that has treated prisoners this way,” he said. The verdict of the military trial cannot be appealed.

Agiza’s wife and four children are still living in Sweden, fearing they too will be deported.

El Zari was in prison for two years in Egypt. His lawyer, Kjell Jönsson, says he has evidence he was tortured. He has never been brought to trial. He was released but is under constant surveillance.  
 
Four arrested for ‘assisting terrorism’
In another case, four men were arrested on April 19 in Stockholm and Malmö. Since then their detentions have been extended three times. From the beginning the authorities said only that they were accused of “terrorism” or “assisting terrorism.” After reports in the press that the accusations came from U.S. officials, who are targeting groups in Iraq that organize attacks against the U.S. forces there, the prosecutor made her accusations public. She accused the men of “murder and universally dangerous devastation, directed against the state of Iraq,” a formulation from a new law on “terrorist crimes.” The court agreed only to the charge of “assisting” such acts.

All four insist they are innocent. Their lawyers have been ordered not to disclose anything about the trial.

In order to keep the men in jail longer than the stipulated period of one or two weeks at a time, the prosecutor is considering using a special law from 1952. The law is seldom used, and can only be applied in cases such as “terror threats,” hijackings, “universally dangerous devastation,” murder, or arson.

This is the second time a new “antiterrorist” law, which was adopted by the Swedish government last year, has been used. The first time a man was arrested here and charged for collaboration with al Qaeda. The court dismissed the charges the first time his detention was taken up. He was later convicted for illegal possession of a weapon. According to the main daily here, Dagens Nyheter, the political police came to the prison to interrogate him regarding “terrorism.” He refused to meet with them.

All this comes as the government seeks to expand the ability of the police to conduct wiretapping. “If the security police are to prevent crimes, they must be able to act before the crime is committed,” said Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström. Wiretapping, he assured, should be used only when the police suspect serious crimes by “Neo-Nazis, terrorists, and organized crime.”

Bodström and the ministers of justice from the United Kingdom, France, and Ireland made a joint proposal at a European Union meeting in late April that all phone calls, text messages, and e-mail messages must be saved by phone companies and owners of servers for three years in order to “fight crime.”

Swedish police already regularly get access to telephone company records for about a year, although this is not stipulated in any law.

At the same time, voting in parliament on a new law that would limit the rights of those seeking asylum has been postponed to June 16. The measure would prohibit refugees in Sweden from submitting a renewed asylum application with new information once their first application has been turned down. On May 8 demonstrations against this law were held in four cities.  
 
 
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