Nordic Monitor/Stockholm
In a landmark ruling which confirmed that the Swedish judiciary will not treat journalism or political expression as criminal activity, the Supreme Court of Sweden (Högsta domstolen) rejected the Turkish government’s request to extradite journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, ruling that the charges Ankara leveled against him are politically motivated and do not correspond to any offense criminalized under Swedish law.
The court concluded that Turkey failed to meet the minimum legal threshold for extradition, finding that the alleged acts — ranging from newsroom work and membership in a journalists’ union to online commentary and the use of an encrypted messaging application — constituted constitutionally protected journalistic activities, not terrorism.
The judgment, delivered on October 29, 2025, represents one of the clearest judicial rebukes to date against Turkey’s aggressive campaign to target critical and independent Turkish journalists abroad under sweeping counterterrorism statutes, confidentiality provisions and intelligence laws. In its final order the supreme court held that insurmountable obstacles exist under 4 § of the Swedish Extradition Act, rendering extradition to Turkey legally impossible.
In a filing signed by public prosecutor Zafer Ergun, widely criticized for orchestrating politically motivated indictments in close cooperation with Turkey’s intelligence agency, MIT, to advance the interests of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian government, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office formally requested Bozkurt’s extradition on March 4, 2024.
Part of the ruling issued by the Supreme Court of Sweden, which rejected Turkey’s demand to extradite Abdullah Bozkurt, a Turkish journalist living in exile, and emphasized that journalistic work is not a crime in Sweden:
The extradition listed several charges that ranged from disclosing information regarding the Turkish state’s security and political interests, violation of confidentiality, leading and/or establishing a terrorist group and disseminating propaganda on behalf of a terrorist group. The charges carry over 52 years in prison for Bozkurt if he is convicted and receives the maximum penalty.
Among the so-called evidence submitted by Turkey was an extensive reference to Nordic Monitor, the investigative news site founded by Bozkurt and his colleague, Levent Kenez, in 2019 in Stockholm. The outlet has become well known among Turkey observers for exposing wrongdoing within the Erdogan government, ranging from pervasive corruption across state institutions and secret ties to mafia networks, organized crime syndicates and drug traffickers to clandestine Turkish intelligence operations in foreign countries and Erdogan’s aiding and abetting of armed jihadist groups beyond Turkey’s borders.
The Erdogan government has been so unsettled by Nordic Monitor’s series of exposés that it has issued roughly a dozen arrest warrants for Bozkurt and his colleague Kenez. Ankara even went so far as to privately urge the Swedish government to shut the outlet down during Sweden’s NATO accession process, a period in which Turkey delayed approval and ratification for nearly a year.
The extradition request for Bozkurt came amid the Erdogan government’s ongoing campaign of harassment aimed at silencing him and halting his critical reporting and investigative exposés that have repeatedly embarrassed Ankara in front of its international partners and allies. The extradition dossier, which also demanded Bozkurt’s immediate arrest pending proceedings, was formally transmitted to the Swedish Ministry of Justice on May 6, 2024, by Yasin Aydın, the second secretary at the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. Despite the Turkish Embassy’s demand for Bozkurt’s arrest, Swedish authorities declined to take him into custody, a clear sign that they viewed Ankara’s request as politically motivated from the outset.
Turkey’s extradition file further claimed that Nordic Monitor had exposed the activities of Turkish intelligence agency MIT, revealed the identities of intelligence operatives and published classified MIT documents. Bozkurt has indeed authored numerous investigative reports detailing how MIT orchestrated illegal support for armed jihadist groups in Syria, including factions aligned with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as part of Ankara’s covert effort to topple the Assad regime.
His reporting has identified key actors involved in these clandestine operations, many of whom were themselves engaged in conduct that violated Turkish law. Yet none of these individuals have ever faced accountability in Turkey’s judicial system, which over the past decade has been systematically weaponized by the Erdogan government to punish investigative journalists who expose state misconduct rather than those who commit it.
In his defense statement to the court, Bozkurt denied all allegations, arguing that they were fabricated for political purposes and designed to intimidate him into silence. He emphasized that he is a journalist and that the charges were intended to force him to stop working as one. Bozkurt warned that extradition would expose him to a serious risk of assassination, torture or enforced disappearance into an unofficial intelligence-run detention facility and a fundamentally unfair trial in Turkey.
The page from Turkey’s extradition demand that specifically singled out Nordic Monitor, the investigative news website where Abdullah Bozkurt serves as editor-in-chief, alleging that the outlet disclosed clandestine activities of Turkish intelligence agency MIT. Bozkurt’s reporting has revealed how MIT oversaw the transfer of arms to jihadist groups in Syria in 2014 as part of covert operations coordinated by the agency:
Some of the charges stem from the Turkish government’s designation of the Gülen movement, a civic group persecuted by the Erdogan government for years because of its critical stance as a terrorist organization. Erdogan abruptly branded the group as “terrorist” in December 2013, after he and several members of his family were implicated in two major corruption investigations involving Iranian sanctions-buster Reza Zarrab and former al-Qaeda financier Yasin al-Qadi, both of whom had been moving large sums of money through their close ties to Erdogan.
No other country considers the movement a terrorist entity, and it has never been linked to violence since its emergence in the 1960s under the inspiration of the late Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, who died in exile in the United States last year. Bozkurt previously worked for Today’s Zaman, a newspaper whose corporate ownership Ankara viewed as aligned with the movement. His position at the paper as Ankara bureau chief, incorrectly described as “editor-in-chief” in the extradition file, was nonetheless cited by Turkey as criminal evidence
Bozkurt also owned a news agency called Muhabir Haber Ajansı (Reporter News Agency), which he established in May 2016, two months after the government seized the newspaper where he worked in March 2016. Muhabir was likewise unlawfully taken over by the Erdogan government several months after a July 15, 2016, false-flag coup attempt, an event widely seen as engineered to justify a sweeping crackdown on dissent, opposition and criticism, and to initiate a mass purge of nearly 150,000 government employees, including top judges, academics, prosecutors and police chiefs.
In the extradition request, Turkey cited the media outlets Bozkurt had worked at or owned as evidence of a crime. His membership in the Pak Medya journalist union was also listed as a criminal offense in the extradition file that was sent to Sweden.
In a formal opinion submitted to the supreme court on April 2, 2024, under Section 17 of Sweden’s Extradition for Criminal Offenses Act, the Swedish prosecutor-general (Riksåklagaren) firmly concluded that extradition was legally impossible because Turkey’s accusations do not meet the Swedish requirement of double criminality and, in at least one instance, the alleged offense is no longer prosecutable due to the expiration of the applicable statute of limitations.
The opinion noted that nearly all activities described in the Turkish submission including media work, organizational membership and publications are clearly journalistic in nature. Under Swedish law, such actions do not constitute participation in a terrorist organization.
Sweden’s terrorism legislation requires a concrete and qualified contribution to a group’s criminal activity, such as involvement in operational structures or decision-making. The conduct described by Turkey, even if taken at face value, did not approach the threshold for criminal liability in Sweden. Thus, the requirement of double criminality under Section 4 of the extradition act was not satisfied.
The prosecutor-general also reviewed Turkey’s claims that Bozkurt had disclosed classified or sensitive information. The closest Swedish equivalent, the offense of unauthorized handling of secret information under Chapter 19, Section 7 of the Penal Code, applies only to disclosures that can harm Sweden’s security. The material allegedly published by Bozkurt concerned Turkish institutions and Turkish intelligence personnel. Nothing in the description indicated that the information was covered by Swedish secrecy obligations or could harm Swedish interests, meaning the conduct would not be punishable in Sweden. Therefore, this charge also failed the double-criminality test.
Additionally, the prosecutor-general found that the alleged Turkish offense of “violation of confidentiality” was time-barred due to the expiration of the applicable statute of limitations, providing an independent reason why extradition could not be granted.
Letter from the Turkish Embassy to the Swedish Ministry of Justice requesting the arrest and extradition of journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, signed by Yasin Aydın, the embassy’s second secretary in Stockholm:
The opinion concluded unequivocally that none of Turkey’s accusations met Swedish legal standards for extradition, either because the conduct was not criminal under Swedish law or because one of the claims is no longer prosecutable due to the expiration of the applicable statute of limitations. On these grounds, the prosecutor-general recommended that the supreme court reject the extradition request in its entirety.
The court went along with the prosecutor-general’s assessment and rejected the claim that Bozkurt’s activities could constitute participation in a terrorist organization under Swedish law. The court stressed that Swedish terrorism statutes require concrete, operational and purposeful support for an organization engaged in terrorism. Actions cited by Turkey did not meet the threshold of criminal participation under Swedish counterterrorism law.
The court also found that Turkey’s allegations regarding “propaganda” referred almost entirely to journalism and online expression. The accusations were formulated too broadly and lacked any evidence of concrete participation in criminal activity. Therefore, they could not constitute a terrorist offense under Swedish law, either.
The court also examined Turkey’s claim that Bozkurt had published secret or classified material. It noted that the only relevant Swedish offense, 19:7 of the Swedish Penal Code, applies only where disclosure concerns secret material whose revelation would cause harm to Sweden’s national security. Turkey presented no evidence that the alleged documents related in any way to Swedish interests. Therefore, the Swedish offense was not applicable, and double criminality could not be satisfied.
The court’s decision, issued by Justices Stefan Johansson, Eric M. Runesson and Margareta Brattström, firmly establishes that Sweden will not validate politically charged terrorism and other allegations that criminalize journalism, reporting, union membership or dissent. Justice Secretary Benjamin Bergström served as the case’s rapporteur.
The ruling sends a clear signal: Swedish courts will apply their own legal standards, rooted in democratic principles, freedom of press and expression and human-rights protections, regardless of diplomatic pressure. It also reaffirms Sweden’s commitment to safeguarding journalists and dissidents targeted by authoritarian regimes, particularly when accusations are grounded in speech, reporting or political association rather than genuine criminal conduct.
