A Swedish court found an anti-Islam campaigner guilty on Monday of hate crimes for staging public desecrations of the Holy Quran, in a ruling handed down five days after another man also being prosecuted over the incidents was shot dead. Salwan Najem, a Swedish citizen, was given a suspended sentence and fines over the desecrations and derogatory comments he made about Muslims in the 2023 incidents, which led to unrest and inspired anger towards Sweden in Muslim countries. Relations \between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s protests. Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion. In August of that year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of one to five, saying the Holy Quran burnings had made the country a “prioritised target”. His fellow campaigner, Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika, was shot dead last week on the day he had been due to receive his verdict in a parallel case.