Donald Trump speaks out about immigration in Sweden

Donald Trump has waded back into the controversy over his comments on Sweden, claiming that its policy of accepting large numbers of migrants was not working.

Mr Trump sparked outcry and confusion over the weekend when he held at rally in Melbourne, Florida, and spoke darkly of things that had allegedly happened “last night” in Sweden. As people from Stockholm to Linkoping scratched their heads as to what he was referring to, the US President then admitted he was talking about a widely debunked Fox News report he had seen on television the night before.

On Monday, Mr Trump tweeted: “Give the public a break – The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!”

Mr Trump said he had received his information from a segment on a Fox News broadcast on Friday night by Tucker Carlson. Mr Carlson interviewed Ami Horowitz, producer of a film that claimed to document alleged violence committed by refugees in Sweden.

News of Mr Horowitz’s documentary made headlines last year when he told conservative outlets such as Breitbart News that there were Muslim “no-go zones” in Europe.

“Over the last two years, they’ve taken in over 350,000 Syrian refugees,” he said. “The reason why I went there was to investigate why Sweden has become the rape capital of Europe. Rape was not unknown, but relatively minor. There were few incidents of rape, let’s say about 10 years ago. And rape has absolutely skyrocketed in Europe.”

The New York Times reported that Swedish officials said their statistics did not justify the kind of assertions made by Mr Horowitz, and that the country had a high number of sexual assault reports, relative to other European countries, because more victims come forward, not because there was more violence.

Henrik Selin, political scientist and deputy director of the Swedish Institute, a state agency dedicated to promoting Sweden globally, told the newspaper he had completed a study focusing on negative news reports about Sweden’s intake of refugees.

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He said there were many exaggerations and distortions, including reports falsely claiming that Sharia law was predominant in parts of the country.

Swedish officials have hit back at Mr Trump's assertions.

Former Prime Minister Carl Bildt responded by saying they were twice as many murders just in the Florida county where Mr Trump spoke on Saturday, compared to all of Sweden.

“Last year there were approximately 50 per cent more murders only in Orlando/Orange in Florida, where Trump spoke the other day, than in all of Sweden. Bad,” he said.

Indeed, Sweden’s crime rate has fallen since 2005, official statistics show, even as it has taken in hundreds of thousands of immigrants from countries like Syria and Iraq.

Sweden's embassy in the United States repeated Mr Trump’s tweet about having seen the Fox report, and added: “We look forward to informing the US administration about Swedish immigration and integration policies.”