Attacks on Swedish soldiers 'hushed up'
Details of attacks on members of the Swedish Armed Forces have been kept secret by senior officers, according to a member of parliament.
The Liberal Party's Allan Widman has told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that the information has even been kept from the parliamentary defence committee.
Parliament is responsible for the Swedish contribution to the Nato-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan and important information about the security situation in the country should not be kept from the committee, Widman told DN.
He has demanded that the head of the Swedish forces in Afghanistan, Jan Jonsson, appears once again before the defence committee.
When Jonsson met the committee on May 18th he did not tell members of an incident which occurred on May 8th, when a group of Swedish soldiers were attacked with anti-tank missiles east of the city of Aqchah. The missiles landed a few hundred metres behind them.
Nor did the operation chief inform politicians of an incident from June of last year, when a remote control bomb exploded under a car carrying two Swedes in central Kabul. The soldiers were unharmed.
Jan Jonsson told DN that the information was not passed on to parliament since it was not clear that the attacks were specifically targeted at the Swedish soldiers.
Sweden has a force of around 250 soldiers in Afghanistan. Most of those are based in Mazar-e-Sharif, where two Swedes were killed in an attack in November.
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The Liberal Party's Allan Widman has told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that the information has even been kept from the parliamentary defence committee.
Parliament is responsible for the Swedish contribution to the Nato-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan and important information about the security situation in the country should not be kept from the committee, Widman told DN.
He has demanded that the head of the Swedish forces in Afghanistan, Jan Jonsson, appears once again before the defence committee.
When Jonsson met the committee on May 18th he did not tell members of an incident which occurred on May 8th, when a group of Swedish soldiers were attacked with anti-tank missiles east of the city of Aqchah. The missiles landed a few hundred metres behind them.
Nor did the operation chief inform politicians of an incident from June of last year, when a remote control bomb exploded under a car carrying two Swedes in central Kabul. The soldiers were unharmed.
Jan Jonsson told DN that the information was not passed on to parliament since it was not clear that the attacks were specifically targeted at the Swedish soldiers.
Sweden has a force of around 250 soldiers in Afghanistan. Most of those are based in Mazar-e-Sharif, where two Swedes were killed in an attack in November.
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