Guantanamo Ex-Prisoner Faces Hatred Back Home - In Sweden

by Simon Reeves

(PNS) -- The furor that greeted the homecoming of a Swedish citizen who was released from the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, highlights the volatile issue of discrimination in Sweden.

Mehdi Ghezali was arrested in Pakistan while fleeing Afghanistan in the company of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, and was released in July after spending a little over two years at Guantanamo.

Since his return the 25-year-old has faced the wrath of many Swedes. Although he was born in Sweden and carries the country's passport, Mehdi is not considered a real Swede in some quarters because he has an Algerian father and a Finnish mother.

The local press, convinced that Mehdi was not a victim but a radical young Muslim tried to poke holes in his Afghan story. While it could not present any incriminating evidence of Mehdi's activities in Afghanistan, it managed to reveal that he was detained briefly and released in Portugal on criminal charges which were subsequently dropped. It also reported that he had studied at Islamic schools in England and Pakistan. As a result many Swedes, including some political parties, clamored for the government to explain why it spent 500,000 Swedish kronor -- about $50,000 -- to transport the former detainee home.

When Mehdi called a press conference to set the record straight it turned into a fiasco. He was bombarded with questions like, "Do you know that many people hate you?" and "So you really think you will ever be a free man?"

Gosta Hulten, the head of the advocacy group which campaigned for Mehdi's release, went on the counter-attack. He wrote in the daily paper Aftonbladet that the media was heartless. He argued that the U.S., by releasing Mehdi, had indirectly agreed that he was innocent.

Hulten further accused local journalists of using Mehdi to pursue their usual hostility toward foreigners and immigrants. He blamed the media for fanning the flames that led to death threats against Mehdi.

"I don't believe that you would have treated Mehdi like this if he had a Swedish name in his passport," Mr Hulten noted. In this wealthy north European country of nine million people, discrimination against immigrants, which number slightly above 1 million, is constantly a hot issue.

In the view of many Swedes, immigrants are lazy and are only interested in exploiting the country's generous welfare system. Information consultant, Lars Jedelund, writes that about 20 billion Swedih kronor -- around $2 billion -- is paid out yearly by authorities as social assistance to immigrants.

Political parties like the Swedish Democrats have exploited this resentment and blamed foreigners for the rise in crime. In fact, it is hate crimes that is on the increase. Legislation had been passed to fight discrimination and hate crimes. Those guilty of hate crimes are severely punished. Yet a recent study showed that hate crimes rose five percent last year. Most unusually, more and more women are getting involved in such crimes. Swedish authorities have not determined what led to the increase among women, but some say that Swedes who are well-known for their tolerant policies towards homosexuals are increasingly intolerant when it comes to immigrants.

Fighting discrimination is a tall order in a country where a football coach was recently reprimanded for yelling at a black footballer to go back home to Africa and live in the trees, and where football fans routinely throw bananas at black players.

And immigrants are talking back. They maintain that without a level playing field in the labor market many are forced to depend on social benefits. It is common knowledge that foreigners are likely to receive longer prison terms and higher fines than native-borns. They point to research that indicates that Swedish employers prefer their kinsmen over others.

Speaking on a television program called 'We and Them,' Integration Minister Mona Sahlin revealed that employers set unbelievable high demands on language skills for even menial janitorial jobs. Sahlin also chided landlords who won't rent out apartments to immigrants and pointed out how some city authorities refuse to allow refugees into their communities.

To improve their chances in the job market, some immigrants are using extreme means. Some whites who come from other European countries have adopted Swedish names while Arabs are dyeing their hair blonde to look Scandinavian.

A concerted effort that aims at educating Swedes that immigrants are a blessing to their country must be pursued, said Sahlin, stressing that her compatriots must accept that the new Sweden is multi-cultural, and that discrimination must end. "Like it or not, this is the new Sweden," she said.

Meanwhile, after facing continuous death threats, Ghezali Mehdi, the former Guantanamo prisoner, is now under police protection.