Greta Said Somali Deportees Were Not Criminals - Several Are Convicted

STOCKHOLM - Greta Thunberg and the activist group Vi står inte ut ("We Can't Stand It") sounded the alarm when a chartered plane was set to fly Somali citizens from Sweden, Norway and Finland to Mogadishu. The deportees were described as "ordinary people," and the group insisted that none of those it knew of were criminals. But according to the Swedish tabloid Expressen, several of the people being flown out of Sweden have criminal convictions - and others gave false information about their identity and clan affiliation.

On Tuesday evening, around ten Somali nationals were taken from the Swedish Migration Agency's detention centre in Märsta to Stockholm Arlanda Airport to be deported on a specially chartered aircraft.

The flight was reportedly part of a joint Nordic operation, picking up Somali nationals in Norway, Finland and Sweden before continuing to Mogadishu.

"None of Them Are Criminals"

Ahead of the flight, an intense social media campaign was launched to stop it. One of the most widely shared appeals came from Vi står inte ut, and Thunberg helped spread it.

"None of the people we know of are criminals - they are ordinary people who have lived their lives in Sweden for many years," the group wrote. It claimed they were being deported not "because of anything they have done," but because of changes to Sweden's migration laws.

The public was urged to contact the Swedish Migration Agency, the media and members of parliament to try to stop the deportations. According to the activists, a total of 90 people from the three Nordic countries were on the deportation list, 34 of them women. Swedish authorities have not confirmed that figure.

Convictions Left Out

The documents Expressen has seen paint a different picture. Several of the people being deported are convicted criminals. Others had their identity and clan affiliation questioned as part of their migration cases.

Even the activist organisation that first put out the figure of 90 deportees admits in its own press release that some of them have been sentenced to deportation by a court - though it says "only a few."

The careful wording - "the people we know of" - also means the activists never claimed to know the background of everyone on the plane. Yet the claim that the deportees were not criminals became the central argument of the campaign.

How many of those flown out of Sweden were deported for crimes, and how many after rejected asylum or residence applications, has not been made public. The Swedish Prison and Probation Service, which handles deportation transports, declined to confirm who was on board, saying only that charter flights are used when several people are going to the same destination or when security requires it.

Twins Taken Off a Passenger Jet in September

Among those reportedly taken from Märsta were 22-year-old twins Aliya and Najib. It is not the first attempt to deport them. In September, authorities tried to send them to Somalia on a regular passenger flight, but protests from other passengers led the pilot to refuse to take off, and the twins were returned to detention. This time, authorities chose a charter.

The timing is sensitive. Parliament is working on a so-called stop law for some young adults who arrived in Sweden as minors but lost the right to stay once they turned 18. All parliamentary parties backed moving forward with it on October 13, and Swedish Radio reports the twins would likely have been covered had the law already been in force.

Somalia Too Dangerous - Except for Visits

Activists have also attacked Sweden's cooperation with the Somali government aimed at getting more deportation orders carried out, pointing to the security situation in Somalia, where Sweden's Foreign Ministry advises against travel to large parts of the country.

That argument has been tested before. Samnytt has previously reported that the Left Party's Somali-born MP Mohamed Abdukadir Ali travelled back to Somalia several times after being granted residence in Sweden.

When Vi står inte ut and Thunberg mobilised against Tuesday's flight, the families and young adults were put front and centre. The fact that several of the deportees had criminal convictions was nowhere in the activists' message - instead, the message was that the people they knew of were not criminals.