Swedish neo-Nazis jailed over bomb attacks on refugee centres

A Swedish court on Friday sentenced three neo-Nazi activists for up to eight-and-a-half years in prison over bomb attacks against refugee shelters that left one person seriously injured.

“All three defendants have a common background in the Nordic Resistance Movement and got to know each other through the movement’s activities,” said a district court in Sweden’s second largest city, Gothenburg.

The Nordic Resistance Movement, founded in 1997, is described as the most violent Nazi organisation in Sweden by the Swedish anti-racism magazine Expo.

The three men, aged 23, 50 and 20, were sentenced to eight years and six months, five years, and one year and six months in prison, respectively.

Two bomb attacks and one attempted attack took place between November and January.

The first incident occurred on November 11 when a bomb went off outside a Gothenburg building run by a far-left association. No one was injured in that blast.

This was followed by a second bomb attack against an asylum home in a Gothenburg suburb on January 5. One staff cleaner was left with serious injuries to his legs.

A third bomb outside another asylum home located on a Gothenburg campsite failed to detonate on January 25.

Sweden, which took in the highest number of refugees per capita in Europe in 2015, saw dozens of arson attacks against refugee centres that same year. The culprits have rarely been caught.

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