Ibrahimovic Files ‘Hate Crime’ Complaint After House And Statue Vandalised

Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic Thursday filed a “hate
crime” complaint Thursday after being the target of vandalism and
racists threats, police said, a day after the star announced his
part ownership in football club Hammarby.

A statue of the player in Malmo was attacked with fire and paint
while the word “Judas” was daubed across the front door of his
residence in Stockholm.

The perpetrators of the threatening acts have not been
identified but “Ibra” angered fans of Malmo FF (MFF) — the club
where he started his professional career in 1999 — on Wednesday
when he announced he had bought a share in rival club Hammarby.

In Malmo, several people, most of them wearing hoods, vandalised
a statue of Ibrahimovic that was unveiled just two months ago. Near
the monument they wrote the words “Cigani do” (“Gypsy” in Bosnian,
and “die” in Swedish) in spray paint.

Born in Malmo, Ibrahimovic is the son of a Bosnian father and
Croatian mother.

Videos posted on social media showed masked people lighting
fires and aiming them at the statue. There was no significant
damage and a protective barrier has since been put up around
it.

“An investigation has been opened into vandalism and threats
with suspected hate crime motive. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is the
plaintiff,” a police spokesman told AFP.

Earlier on Wednesday, angry supporters had slipped a toilet seat
on to one of the statue’s arms.

Hammarby, a Stockholm-based team playing alongside MFF in
Sweden’s top league, announced Wednesday morning that Ibrahimovic
had bought around 25 percent of the shares in the club.

“He’s turned his back on the city and what made him who he is,”
Kaveh Hosseinpour, vice-president of the MFF supporters’ club, told
broadcaster TV4.

At noon on Thursday, nearly 7,000 people had signed an online
petition calling for the immediate removal of his statue in
Malmo.

“How could you do this to us?” one outraged signatory wrote
while another proclaimed that “everything can’t just be about
money”.

In Stockholm, the door of the former Juventus, Barcelona, Paris
Saint-Germain and Manchester United forward’s home was covered with
the word “Judas,” and a tin of “surstromming,” a notoriously smelly
fermented herring had been opened and poured outside the
building.

Ibrahimovic, whose contract with Los Angeles Galaxy expires at
the end of the year, has not announced whether he will continue his
career at another club.