RE: volume14 Aug 2018 17:02
The Green Party was hit by a political scandal in April 2016, as images emerged of Green Party housing minister Mehmet Kaplan attending a dinner party alongside leading members of the Turkish far-right extremist group Grey Wolves.[21][22][23][24] Following attention to comments made by Kaplan in 2009 comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, Kaplan resigned as minister, while still defended by the party leadership.[21][25] After his resignation, images emerged of Kaplan and other members of the Green Party displaying hand gestures associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.[21][25] Another controversy ensued as a rising Green-Party star, Yasri Khan, refused to shake hands with a female TV reporter.[23][25] Lars Nicander, director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish Defence University, compared the revelations with how the Soviet Union sought to infiltrate democratic Western parties during the Cold War, alleging that the Green Party similarly may have been "infiltrated by Islamists".[21][26]
In April 2016, a Green Party politician from the council of Burlöv Municipality and the chairman of the local Syrian commity group invited, in his latter capacity, Osama bin Ladin's former advisor Salman al-Ouda to lecture for them together with two other community groups. This invitation was controversial in Sweden as salafist al-Ouda had stated antisemitic views and denied the Holocaust. He was suspended for a time by the party leadership.[27][28]
In May 2016 Green Party co-spokesperson and Environmental Minister Åsa Romson confirmed she would resign from both positions as a result of her leadership during the party crisis, along with controversies of her own, such as referring to the September 11 attacks as the September 11 "olycka" (which can be translated as "accident", or alternatively as "misfortune" which Romson later claimed as her intention) in a television interview.[29][30][31][32]
Sign In
Follow the stocks
