A whole team of immigrant resettlement assistants in Sweden have been sacked amid mounting concerns that a number of them may have been working as recruiters for terrorist organisations like Isis.
Agency boss Mikael Sjoberg said they were handed information that indicated some contact-making situations or recruitment attempts relating to militant groups had been made, which led to the immediate sacking of all the resettlement assistants. He added that Sapo, the Swedish intelligence service, was now investigating the matter.
Sjoberg declined to name the groups the workers were suspected of having links with, but a source said the radical Islamist group Isis was among them.
The agency’s resettlement assistants’ role included helping recently arrived migrants in the Scandinavian country with the settling-in process by helping them fill in paperwork or enrolling them in language courses.
However, some of the workers are also thought to have partaken in fraudulent activities and seeking bribes in return for their help. The source explained that loans or gifts, such as mobile phones, tablets and cash, were what certain assistants would ask for before they would assist the migrants.
In January, Sapo revealed that no less than 100 Swedes had travelled to the Middle East to fight with Islamist groups involved in the Iraq and Syria wars.