Sweden mulls war crimes charge for jihadist jailed abroad

Swedish prosecutors on Monday asked a court to remand in detention a convicted Swedish jihadist for his suspected involvement in the 2014 killing of a Jordanian pilot in Syria.

Osama Krayem, 32, has already been sentenced for his involvement in the 2015 attacks in Paris and the attacks in Brussels a year later.

Prosecutors requested he be remanded in detention in his absence for “severe war crimes and terrorist crimes” over his suspected role in the murder of the Jordanian pilot.

Krayem is currently serving a jail sentence in France. The prosecutor’s request is a common step before a formal charge when the suspect is out of the country.

An aircraft belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force was shot down in Syria on December 24, 2014, and the pilot was captured by the Islamic State (IS) the same day near the central city of Raqqa, Sweden’s Prosecution Authority said.

The pilot was locked in a cage and burned alive. Images of his death were broadcast by the jihadist group.

“No other individual has been prosecuted for this act, and the man we have requested to be detained will be the first for whom prosecution may take place,” deputy chief prosecutor Henrik Olin said.

The authority said the act was considered “one of the most brutal murders committed by IS during the war in Syria”.

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“The pilot was incapacitated and subjected to an extremely cruel act in violation of the laws of war.

“The fact that the execution was then filmed and the film distributed constitutes an additional violation of his person,” senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said.

Krayem, who is from Malmo in southern Sweden, joined IS in Syria in 2014 before returning to Europe.

In June 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in France for assisting in the planning of the 2015 Paris attacks, in which 130 people died.

The following year, he was given a life sentence in Belgium for participating in the bombings on March 22, 2016, at Brussels’ main airport and on the metro system, which killed 32 people.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority said it would not comment further on the case until it had reached a decision on whether to charge Krayem.

Prosecutors said that if the case went to trial, they would request Krayem’s extradition from France to attend it.

A hearing to decide whether he will be remanded in detention in his absence was scheduled for Tuesday, the Stockholm district court said.