Stockholm

Aron Verständig, President of the Swedish Jewish Communities, expressed his gratitude and the broader significance of this visit.

Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in July and set it on fire over a planned Quran burning in Stockholm.

The European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Tuesday that Johan Floderus' imprisonment had been raised repeatedly with authorities in the Islamic Republic.

The New York Times reported that a Swedish citizen, who according to the paper has been working for the European Union's diplomatic corps, had been imprisoned in Iran for more than 500 days.

The decision to appoint a commission met with immediate scepticism from several political parties, including the government's support party, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats.

Sweden's SAPO security service raised the terrorist alert from 3 to 4 on a scale from 1-5, reflecting a high threat.

After objecting for a year to Sweden’s bid to join NATO, Turkey finally relented. But tensions are still high, with recent Quran burnings, Kurdish groups, and Turkey’s EU membership bid at the center

Sweden and Denmark have seen a string of protests in recent weeks, in which copies of the Quran were burned or otherwise damaged.

Criticizing a religion or religious symbols is not punishable in Sweden; this falls under freedom of expression which is protected under the constitution.

Aliya and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer expressed strong condemnation of the woman's intention to burn the Torah.