Do videos allegedly showing the extradition of Salwan Momika, the Iraqi refugee who burned the Quran in Sweden, to Iraq, actually depict genuine events? No, they do not. The videos in question are outdated and unrelated to Momika, who burned a copy of the Quran on June 28, 2023. Despite Iraq's request for Sweden to extradite him, there is currently no evidence suggesting that he has been extradited.
The claim that Salwan Momika has been extradited to Iraq appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published on Tiktok by @xmmmmx4 on July 2, 2023, under the title "The moment of handing over criminal Salwan, the burner of the Quran, to the Iraqi embassy."
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Jul 5 14:26:33 2023 UTC)
The videos that claim to be showing Salman Momika being handed over to Iraqi authorities have gone viral on TikTok and are shared by many different accounts, such as here and here.
However, after investigating, Lead Stories found that both videos are outdated and have no connection to Salwan Momika. One of the videos actually shows the extradition of a terrorist to Egyptian authorities in 2019, while the other video depicts the court trial of two Iraqi twins in Finland who were accused of participating in the execution of 11 individuals as members of the Islamic State in Iraq.
On June 29, 2023, the Iraqi media outlet Shafaq News reported that the head of the Judiciary Council in Iraq initiated legal procedures for the extradition of Salwan Momika back to Iraq. However, both Iraq and Sweden's official statements did not mention any plans to extradite him. On July 2, 2023, the Government Offices of Sweden issued an official statement emphasizing the significance of border security and implementing preventive measures to avoid similar incidents in the future. Nevertheless, there was no reference to the extradition of Salwan Momika back to Iraq.
Lead Stories conducted a Google News search using their index of thousands of credible news sites, but the results did not show any media outlet reporting about Salwan Momika being extradited to Iraq.
