A Swedish court on Thursday found a man guilty of attempting to finance the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
The verdict comes at a sensitive time for Sweden’s relations with Turkey.
Ankara is holding up Sweden’s application for NATO membership, in part because it says Sweden harbours supporters of militant groups that it considers to be terrorists.
The man’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday showed support for Sweden’s entry into NATO in talks with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson as doubts linger that Turkey will lift its opposition in time for the military alliance’s summit next week.
“The district court sentences a Kurdish man with origins in Turkey for having tried to pressure a Kurdish businessman in Stockholm to pay money to the PKK at gunpoint,” Stockholm District court judge Mans Wigen said in a statement.
“The blackmail attempt has taken place within the framework of an extensive fundraising activity that the PKK conducts in Europe, i.e. through extortion,” he said.
The court sentenced the man to four years and six months in prison for attempted extortion, gun crime and funding of terrorism, the verdict showed.
“The man must also be deported from Sweden with a ban on returning here without a time limit,” the court said in the verdict.
(Reuters)
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