Sweden’s public broadcaster, SVT, has come under fire for revealing “inflammatory” statistics proving foreign-born men commit around 85 per cent of stranger rapes ahead of the country’s general election next month.

Broadcast on investigative journalism show Mission Review on Wednesday, analysis of 843 district court cases over the past five years found that 58 per cent of men convicted of rapes and attempted rapes in the period were born overseas.

Looking at just assault rape cases, in which the perpetrator and victim were not previously acquainted, the proportion of foreign-born grew to more than eight in ten, almost half of whom had been living in Sweden less than a year when they launched their attack.

While figures showing the predominance of migrants amongst people convicted of rape in Sweden have gradually made their way to the mainstream media — in most cases long after Breitbart London noted the trend — the SVT broadcast was slated as peddling racist “conspiracy theories”.

“It is a poor programme which should never be broadcast,” said Jerzy Sarnecki, a former chief investigator at Sweden’s National Crime Prevention Council (BRA) who prominently features in the media as an expert on all things crime-related.

Sweden is not an easy place to discuss simple truths — admissions like this mean something https://t.co/SZKOk6VtMw — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 8, 2018

“The program is based on an old right-wing conspiracy theory which purports that foreign men are coming to Sweden and raping Swedish women and that the establishment — a politically correct elite — attempts to conceal these crimes,” he told SVT.

According to the far-left criminologist, who critics say typifies the Swedish establishment’s “denial and cloaking culture” regarding problems relating to mass immigration, the sample analysed by the public broadcaster was far too small to draw any worthwhile conclusions about offenders.

Rebuking the programme for having looked into the country of origin of perpetrators at all, Sarnecki said it was “absurd” to believe there could be any link between rape offending and mass migration, warning the show’s broadcast could have disastrous consequences ahead of elections by “further establishing this right-wing idea of ​​foreign men coming to Sweden and raping Swedish women”.

The BBC also expressed concern over the programme being aired ahead of the election September 9, at which Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats look likely to face their worst election results in the party’s history as immigration tops voters’ list of concerns.

Noting that the “anti-immigration Sweden Democrats” look set to attract a record high proportion of votes, the UK broadcaster said it had “asked why SVT had decided to produce a potentially inflammatory programme ahead of the election”, when it spoke to the show’s chief editor, Ulf Johansson, about the figures.