Nearly 40% of Those Arrested Were Foreign Nationals
Translated from Icelandic and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
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- Foreign nationals accounted for 42.2% of people arrested in Iceland last year and nearly 40% of those arrested from 2019 through June 2026.
- Justice Minister Þorbjörg Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir provided the figures in response to a parliamentary inquiry from Independence Party lawmaker Diljá Mist Einarsdóttir.
- The inquiry sought annual figures by offense type and nationality, along with the proportion of foreign nationals among all people arrested.
Nearly 40% of people arrested in Iceland from 2019 through June 2026 were foreign citizens, according to figures provided by Justice Minister Þorbjörg Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir.
The figures came in response to a two-part inquiry from Diljá Mist Einarsdóttir, a lawmaker from the Independence Party. She asked for the number of foreign citizens arrested from 2019 through 2025, broken down by year, offense type and nationality.
She also requested the proportion of foreign nationals among all people arrested in each year of the same period, with a breakdown by type of offense. The response states that foreign nationals represented 42.2% of those arrested last year.
About this summary
Originally published by Morgunblaðið in Icelandic. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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