Sweden cancels immigrant training scheme over militant recruitment

Sweden has cancelled a job training program for new immigrants following reports that the program coaches were recruiting people for Takfiri terrorist groups.

“We have been alerted by participants that coaches have tried to recruit them to terrorist organizations,” Patrik Svensson, spokesman for Sweden’s National Labor Agency, said on Friday.

Svensson added that the agency had informed Sweden’s security service about the suspicious activities in the training program.

According to the Swedish official, the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group might be behind the recruitment.

The program was initiated in 2010 to tackle the high unemployment rate among new immigrants in Sweden.

The decision of the Swedish government came a week after a gunman, named Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, attacked a café hosting a debate attended by controversial Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks in the Danish capital Copenhagen, killing one and injuring three others.

Hours later, he attacked the main synagogue of Copenhagen, leaving one person dead and two policemen wounded.

The gunman was killed during a shootout with police following the second incident.

Later reports said that El-Hussein had sworn allegiance to ISIL terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The ISIL terrorist group, with members from several Western countries, controls swathes of land in Syria and Iraq, and has been carrying out horrific acts of violence such as public decapitations and crucifixions against all communities such as Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians.