Donald Trump is right, there was a recent attack in Sweden. By neo-Nazis on a refugee centre

US President could have been referring to largely underreported 'politically motivated' incident in Gothenburg

Lucy Pasha-Robinson
Sunday 19 February 2017 15:45 GMT
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President Trump cites terrorist incident in Sweden that never happened

The world reacted with confusion after Donald Trump cited a Swedish terrorist attack during a campaign-style rally in Florida that appeared never to have happened.

One of the country's official Twitter accounts, controlled by a different citizen each week, said: "Nothing has happened here in Sweden. There has not [been] any terrorist attacks here. At all."

However, despite widespread debunking of his claims, it has since emerged a largely underreported attack did, in fact, occur last month.

Three suspected neo-Nazis were arrested in January after a Gothenburg Asylum centre became the target of a homemade bomb attack, leaving one person seriously injured.

Security services said all three suspects had previously been members of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), a group that openly promotes racist and anti-Semitic views and has vocally opposed non-white immigration to the country.

The Swedish intelligence service Säpo said the incident on 5 January, which was also linked to two others in Gothenburg in recent months, appeared to be politically motivated.

The NMR was set up in 1997 by former members of the White Aryan Resistance and employees of Folktribunen, a neo-National socialist magazine. The group is considered as the figurehead for Sweden’s white power movement.

Sweden took in more refugees per capita than any other European country in 2016, which Mr Trump cited in his speech as creating problems "they never thought possible."

The former real-estate mogul focused on migration in Europe and linked it to terror attacks in Brussels, Nice and Paris - before adding Sweden to the list.

“We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden,” he told supporters in Melbourne.

“Who would believe this? Sweden! They took in large numbers, they’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It came as a 2016 report found immigration had helped fuel Sweden's biggest economic boom in five years.

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