The Swedish Chancellor of Justice recently shut down an investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm, and his reason has to be read to be believed: Open season on Swedish Jews.

Earlier this year Swedish Chancellor of Justice Mr Göran Lambertz decided to discontinue his department’s pre-trial investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm, where audio cassettes with highly inflammatory anti-Semitic content were being sold. After Swedish radio programme Dagens Eko unveiled the contents of the cassettes in November 2005, a charge of racial incitement was filed with the police against the Stockholm mosque.

The Swedish Chancellor of Justice responded by closing the pre-trial investigation on the grounds that “the lecture did admittedly feature statements that are highly degrading to Jews (among other things, they are consistently referred to as the brothers of apes and pigs)” but pointing out that such statements “should be judged differently – and therefore be regarded as permissible – because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict”.