DAR AL HARB / ISLAM - SWEDEN / MOROCCO: SWEDE OF MOROCCAN DESCENT QUESTIONED IN MOROCCO

Swede questioned about Stockholm mosque

Ahmed Essafri, the Swedish citizen of Moroccan descent arrested in Morocco on December 25th, is reported to have spent ten days in a prison cell with his hands and feet bound and his eyes blindfolded. Moroccan security services have been questioning him about a mosque in the Brandbergen suburb of Stockholm, Dagens Nyheter reports.

The newspaper spoke to Essafri's daughter after the family visited him in the Moroccan jail where he is being held.

"When he was arrested he was led away with his hands and feet tied and with a blindfold on. He does not know where he was taken but he thinks it was far underground," she told Dagens Nyheter.He is then reported to have spent the following ten days bound, blindfolded and isolated in a small cell. Security services are said to have interrogated him around the clock.

"The questions were all just about Sweden, about a mosque in Brandbergen, about who went there, what they did and what they talked about," said Essafri's daughter.

He was also quizzed about another Swede of Moroccan origin, who had his assets frozen by the US Finance Department in early December 2006.

The 41-year-old man was described by the American authorities as having been an "undisputed leader for an extremist group" associated with a Muslim community in the same Stockholm suburb. These suspicions have not led to any charges being brought against the man in Sweden.

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1) Swede questioned about Stockholm mosque