STOCKHOLM
(AP) — Gangs of (Muslim) youth angered by the police shooting death of an
elderly man in a mainly (Muslim) immigrant neighborhood hurled rocks at police
and set cars and buildings on fire in a Stockholm suburb early Monday, forcing
the evacuation of an apartment block.
Around
50 (Muslim) youths were involved in the riots in the suburb of Husby, police
spokesman Lars Bystrom said.
The (Muslim)
youths set light to a parking garage, compelling police to evacuate residents
from an adjacent apartment block, Bystrom said. Residents were allowed to
return home after a couple of hours.
Around
80 percent of the roughly 11,000 people living in Husby — a drab, low-income
neighborhood of apartment blocks west of Stockholm — are first or second
generation (Muslim) immigrants.
Bystrom
said police responded to calls of burning cars and were met by masked (Muslim) youths
hurling rocks at them.
Karlsson
said the dead man was "European," but couldn't specify his nationality.
Residents
said they had gathered to protest against the shooting death and that police
responded by sending in SWAT teams that cordoned off the area.
Muslim rioters burning a Swedish flag. |
The (Islamic)
organization said police had used excessive violence against the youths and
also attacked passers-by with batons and dogs.
Police
have launched an internal probe to investigate the shooting death on May 13 of
a 69-year-old man in Husby. They say they shot the man in self-defense because
he had attacked police with a knife when they broke down the door to an
apartment, where he had locked himself up with a woman.
However,
Megafonen has criticized police for initially releasing a faulty report saying
the man was taken to a hospital. The group said residents had seen his dead
body being transported from the scene hours after the shooting in a hearse,
which police later admitted was correct.
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