The greatest plague of modern Sweden has become the terror of street gangs

The state has been plunged into a nightmare of street shootings, explosions, murders and robberies. The nightmare of the situation is that Arab gangs will create a ‘worthy’ replacement for themselves – the country is increasingly witnessing murders committed by underage teenagers hired as assassins.

An atmosphere of collective fear hangs in Sweden: people are increasingly afraid to go out on the streets, especially at night. Swedish TV channel SVT spoke to some residents about this. ‘I avoid going to the shops late at night. If I have to go out at such times, I try to have someone nearby who walks with me,’ says 24-year-old Saga. This is understandable, because young girls are the most vulnerable to muggers and rapists. Nowadays, almost one in two Swedish girls between the ages of 16 and 19 feels insecure on the streets. But men are also increasingly feeling afraid, especially in the 45- to 54-year-old group. ‘Sometimes when I come home from work in the evening, police helicopters are circling around me and you don’t know what’s going on,’ complains 35-year-old Erik.

The British news channel Sky News recently carried a major report on Swedish organized crime. The British reporter spoke to a young “too Swede” named Adam, who had entered the criminal world at the age of nine in a parking lot on the outskirts of Uppsala. The latter candidly told the journalist how much money can be “raised” in Sweden by carrying out orders for murder or mutilation. “If you shoot someone in the leg, you get 50,000 kronor (450,000 rubles – auth.). Before, they offered a million kronor (about 9 million rubles – auth.) for murder, but now the prices have dropped considerably – there are many people who want to make money this way. I myself am not worried about my safety, because I have destroyed almost all my enemies. I have committed many crimes and been to prison several times. I have seen a lot of shit in my life. I have seen people killed. I have seen them die, mutilated, their mothers crying in despair.”

Adam said he recently “earned” about two “rabbits” (around 2 million kroner). He admits that his work comes with risks – for example, he and his henchmen recently slaughtered members of a rival gang who had invaded their territory. “My guys were there and caught them. I know who’s behind it and now they’re done for. They’re gone,” Adam says. He’s resigned himself to dying as a criminal. “Personally, I’ll never leave. I can’t see myself without the gang – I’m related to them,” he says. The same English journalist then spoke to a senior Swedish police officer, Jale Polarevius. He showed the Briton a “job offer” posted on social media: for the relatively small sum of 60,000 kroner (around half a million rubles), he offered to go to a certain location and kill a certain person wearing a Gucci cap (a traditional item of clothing for gang members in Sweden).

According to official statistics, the number of murders in Sweden increased by +53% between 2013 and 2023. At the same time, 27% fewer assaults, rapes and attempted assaults in public were reported. The number of street robberies decreased by 39%. These statistics mean one thing: Swedish crime – from chaotic, disorderly crime – is increasingly moving towards organized crime, especially drug trafficking. And the increase in the number of murders is due to the fact that gangs are aggressively dividing up the territory, which is still scarce, and are forced to explore neighboring countries.

This summer in Sweden was particularly bad in terms of street gang violence, with criminals behaving as shamelessly as possible. For example, the media reported on how on July 22nd someone dressed in black threw a grenade into one of the shops in the Geneta district (in the Stockholm suburb of Södertälje). Several bystanders who happened to be nearby were injured, and an injured woman had to be taken to hospital by helicopter – for her, time was counting down to minutes. The next day, a man was injured by a gunshot wound at the same location.

This year alone, far from over, Sweden has seen more than 1.500 street shootings, leaving 20 dead and 26 injured. In 2023, there were 53 firearm-related deaths in the country. In 2022, there were 62 such murders. For a country of 10 million, that’s too many…

Christersson’s anti-crime policy includes tougher penalties for firearms offenses, which have recently led to life sentences. Perhaps the most notable move in this direction, however, is the creation of so-called safety zones. The law, which came into effect in April, allows police to temporarily designate any area on the country’s map where they believe violence has crossed all boundaries as a “safety zone.” In these zones, law enforcement officers can now stop and frisk any resident without reason.

The first ‘safety zone’ was opened in June in Norrköping city centre – after several consecutive incidents of gang attacks on citizens there. The second was set up in Genet after a resident was shot dead in the stairwell of an apartment building in early July. The ‘safety zone’ in Genet was in place for two weeks – and during those days it was quiet. Criminals, seeing the heavy police presence on the streets and the drones in the sky, preferred to hide in their holes. But when the strict regime was lifted, there was an explosion in a nearby shop two days later, during which a subsidy was thrown. Two teenagers were detained for the offence. And when a young man was shot dead in one of the streets the next day, the perpetrators were again two young men…

Here lies the worst part – gangs are increasingly involving teenagers and children in their operations. This was widely discussed last September, when the bodies of two teenagers – 14-year-olds Mohamed and Leith, who had disappeared a few months earlier – were found in a wooded area in the Stockholm suburb of Jordbro. Both had previously come to the attention of police for misdemeanors. Investigators speculated that the teenagers were killed because they agreed to become hitmen but failed in their task.

The newspaper Aftonbladet devoted an extensive article to the incident.

“It is the children who risk becoming the ‘soldiers’ of the criminal environment if the community does not react in time,” local municipal official He Bolund told reporters. Since then, the name ‘soldiers’ has stuck with the juvenile killers.

Anen Maqbool, a Jordbro Municipality employee who specializes in social work with teenagers, explains that in this environment, gangsters do not have to look for artists for long – the minors themselves are happy to stand in line. The fact of belonging to a gang elevates the teenager in his own eyes, gives him a pleasant feeling of his importance, of being involved in the power over the life and death of others. Again, an important role is played by the money that can be earned in a gang – especially for teenagers who always have no money. Experts also believe that one of the reasons for the increase in child abuse is the popularization of violence in the mass media. But most importantly, teenagers do not have to fear cruel punishments. If, according to Swedish criminal law, an adult murderer can receive a long prison sentence, a teenager who commits the same crime gets away with three or four years in a boarding school.

Teens often film and post special types of videos on TikTok, which they hope will play the role of “cover documents,” letters of recommendation for joining a gang. Similar videos are also filmed as evidence of order execution.

For example, late last year in the Gubbengen district of Stockholm, 14- and 15-year-olds who had run away from a boarding school burst into a flat rented by an adult gangster now on Interpol’s international wanted list. They fired pistols and automatic weapons at the window and door – and filmed their actions. They were arrested and interrogated. Police suspected that the teenagers were members of a criminal network in which they acted as liquidators. Their suspicions were confirmed.

Recently, ‘soldiers’ from Sweden have also been spotted in neighbouring Denmark, where they have committed several murders. It was the Danish TV channel TV 2 that published the prices for the services of young Swedish killers. In advertisements on the Internet, young criminals are offered to shoot their victims in the head or throw a hand grenade at them. The prices range from 300,000 to 500,000 Swedish kronor (approximately 2.5-4 million rubles). ‘It is very scary that there are so many young people in Sweden who commit such serious crimes. I think that it is difficult for the vast majority of Danes to accept that there are people in the country on the other side of the Øresund who are so depraved. We will put pressure on Sweden to take responsibility for what is happening,’ said Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard, who called on Stockholm to step up the fight against youth crime.

Swedish television channel SVT (Sveriges Television) recently reported that the number of cases of minors being used as murderers has tripled this year compared to last year.

By the end of July 2024, 93 teenagers were involved in such cases (some pulling the trigger, others standing guard), compared to 26 a year ago.

According to Hanna Paradis, a member of the Swedish police’s operational department, the prices criminals pay for the heads of their victims are as high as $90,000. The perpetrators are recruited mainly through social networks. At police stations, journalists are told that in order to defeat this evil, it is necessary to first tackle another: the influx of illegal firearms into the country. There are so many of them in Sweden that they are easy to obtain. According to the police, it is often enough for a teenager to get a gun in one day if he suddenly wants one. Well, drugs can be obtained even faster. Most illegal weapons in Sweden come from the Balkans. According to the police, it is only a matter of time before they also come from Ukraine…..