Estonia rejects majority of Swedish prisoners

Estonia has rejected 20 of the 37 Swedish prisoners that Sweden planned to transfer to Tartu prison, SVT reports, citing Expressen and the Estonian newspaper Delfi.

Sweden has rented places at the Estonian prison, and the first Swedish prisoners were flown across the Baltic Sea on Tuesday to serve their sentences.

Under the agreement between Sweden and Estonia, Estonia may reject certain categories of prisoners. The Estonian opposition has criticised the agreement, while the government has promised that no gang criminals will be accepted.

“Sweden gave us Pippi and meatballs, for which we are grateful. But you have to take care of your own rubbish,” Sandra Laur, a politician for the opposition Isamaa party, told SVT News earlier this month.

Organised crime concerns

Estonian police said that 20 of the 37 prisoners had been rejected because of “obvious links to organised crime or a risk of radicalisation”, according to Expressen and Delfi.

“We rejected the majority of the requests because our assessment of the profiles of the prisoners who are to come to Estonia does not correspond with the terms of the agreement,” Tiina Unuks, head of the prison operations unit at the prison department of Estonia’s Ministry of Justice and Digitalisation, told the newspapers.

“We informed Sweden that they were not suitable. Sweden must now review the matter to identify more suitable candidates,” Unuks said.

A summer opinion poll found that 54 percent of Estonia’s population were either completely opposed to or uncertain about the prison agreement. Under the agreement, Tartu prison is expected to be prepared to receive up to 600 Swedish prisoners.

Preliminary figures indicate that around 100 Swedish prisoners are expected to be held at Tartu prison by the end of September.