Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said in 2023 that Sweden had gone into “battle-array for war on the Muslim world” by supporting “the criminal”, and that “all Islamic scholars agree that those who desecrate the Koran deserved the most severe punishment”.

The Swedish prime minister said the shooting of an anti-Islam campaigner just hours before a trial verdict was due on Thursday over his burning the Koran might be linked to a foreign power, and police arrested five people over the killing.

An anti-Islam refugee who became infamous for publicly burning the Koran in Sweden has been shot dead just hours before a court verdict over his controversial stunts.