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”.

Salwan Momika was facing four counts of agitating an ethnic group and a trial verdict had been due the day after his death

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