NORTHERN EUROPE
ISIS recruiter runs two schools in Sweden and will open a third next year – the government does nothing
As it happens, ISIS recruiter operates a free school in Sweden. Years ago the thought of it would have been scandalous. Today’s Sweden, it will likely barely raise an eyebrow.
Sweden’s Security Police, SÄPO, report that the identified activities of the president of the Science School in Gothenburg reveal the reason Sweden’s second-largest city produces the largest number of jihadists, producing roughly 300, or one-third of Sweden’s jihadists.
Having been previously reported for ties with Islamism and employees expressing sympathies for ISIS, the president and principal, Abdel Nasser El Nadi, denies accusations of Islamism, claiming that he has five children born in Sweden and saying he is striving to protect its society.
There has been no formal charges against him, but El Nadi, 53, is a long-time recruiter for Muslim extremism and is present on SÄPO’s Islamist extremists list. The list contains roughly 2000 people, according to Swedish terrorism watchdog Doku.
Doku reports that El Nadi has been running groups for Islamic studies and has appeared in various conferences within the radical Islamic environment in Sweden.
El Nadi also campaigned for a “strong, Sunni Muslim state” in the autumn of 2014, during ISIS’s assault in Syria and Iran. At that time, he managed to create a short-lived, self-proclaimed “caliphate”.
Yet despite years of warnings, the Science School is allowed to continue and is even expanding. Abdel Nasser El Nadi has opened a new school in Gävle.
The school has been granted permission to open a third school in Halmstad in 2019. His application for another school in Gothenburg was rejected, however, only for having been filed too late.
For Sweden it is, perhaps, also too late.