Before the attacks, the mob handed out leaflets with the slogan “It is enough now!” which threatened to give “the North African street children who are roaming around” the “punishment they deserve”.
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After the attack the Swedish Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi group, issued a statement claiming that the groups had “cleaned up criminal immigrants from North Africa that are housed in the area around the Central Station”.
The police also said one man had been arrested on Friday night for punching a plain clothes officer in the face and another for carrying a brass knuckleduster, but the extent of assaults on immigrants was not clear.
Spokeswoman Towe Haegg told Swedish radio police had not received any reports of violence against people from migrant backgrounds.
Hundreds of masked men rampaged through Stockholm’s main train station on Friday evening as they allegedly targeted refugees in a string of violent attacks.
“They were scattering leaflets which had the intention to incite people to carry out crimes”, Stockholm police confirmed its website.
This week, the country’s national police chief asked the government for more money and more officers in the wake of the migrant crisis. All had been released by the following morning. He told the newspaper he hid in a supermarket after being hit in the face, saying: ‘I was very scared and really thought I would die’.
The men were wearing arm bands and have been reportedly linked to football hooligan gangs.
According to The Local, witnesses said at least three people were assaulted by the mob.
Tensions have increased after a 22-year-old employee was stabbed to death at a centre for young asylum seekers earlier this week. A 15-year old asylum seeker was detained on the homicide, near Gothenburg, in Molndal.
Sweden is likely to deport up to half last year’s record 163,000 asylum seekers either voluntarily or forcibly, presenting a major challenge to authorities, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said on Thursday. No other nation in Europe, including Germany, took in more refugees per capita.
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The numbers arriving in Sweden have fallen significantly it imposed tighter border controls this year.
