Hired teenage hitmen test the limits of Swedish justice – DNyuz

After winning elections two years ago, Sweden’s center-right government took over a country plagued by gang violence so severe that only Montenegro and Albania top Europe in per capita shootings. The coalition government has toughened sentencing rules, and gangs have responded by turning to minors, who face the prospect of juvenile justice rather than life sentences in the adult system, for contract killings.

In the first half of this year, the number of young people under 15 suspected of involvement in murder plots is almost four times higher than last year. In Sweden, young people are even being recruited for contract killings in Denmark. The previous government vigorously advocated a soft-glove approach for those involved in gangs. Now, even an iron fist may not be enough.

Swedes used to think teenage killers were an American problem, but now they’re a domestic one. Between January and July, 93 children aged 14 and under were suspected of involvement in murder, attempted murder or complicity in murder, Swedish prosecutors said. That’s up from 26 during the same period the year before, and 26 is a significant number in itself, especially in a country of just 10.5 million people. Late last month, two youths were given lengthy prison sentences for three murders they committed in 2023, when they were 15 and 16, respectively. Four teenagers from small northern towns are being investigated for two killings far from their hometowns this summer. They appear to have been recruited by gangsters looking for killers for hire.

Why the increase in youth murders? The Swedish government is trying to curb the country’s rampant gun violence by increasing prison sentences. Although the previous government, consisting of Social Democrats, sometimes in coalition with the Greens, had assured the Swedish public for years that nothing was wrong, Swedes could see with their own eyes and through the rising crime rates how murders and attempted murders were multiplying in their previously mostly peaceful country. Last year, there were 363 shootings, resulting in 53 deaths, not to mention other violent crimes.

The current Justice Minister, Gunnar Strommer, and his fellow ministers have tried to stem the violence by imposing tougher sentences and, most recently, making it easier to sentence minors to prison. The coalition has proposed prison sentences for 15- to 17-year-olds who have committed murder and other serious crimes; instead, they are now sent to youth centres for rehabilitation treatment. The effectiveness of such treatment is questionable and has been further undermined by the habit of offenders to escape, often with the help of gangs. The government’s plans for more prison sentences make a lot of sense.

But gangsters have little regard for human life, including the lives of children. The Swedish gangs, which often collaborate with gangs in countries such as Albania, Kosovo and Turkey, as well as in Kurdish regions, have simply shifted their recruitment of hitmen to a younger demographic.

There is a link between organised crime and some ethnic minority communities in Sweden. According to police statistics, deadly violence is three and a half times more common in so-called vulnerable neighbourhoods than in other neighbourhoods. But despite the brave work police do in such areas (three years ago, an officer was shot dead by a 17-year-old while on patrol), the increase in violence has continued. The result is the horrifying figure presented by prosecutors last month: a 258 per cent increase between last year and this year in the number of young people under 15 involved in murder, manslaughter or planning such crimes.

The young killers are being recruited online, Swedish authorities say: both through Western social messaging services and the Russian messaging service Telegram, whose founder was recently arrested in France on charges that his app had become a hotbed of criminal organizations. There are even special apps for contract killings, where anyone can accept a job if they see the details and the reward. Lisa Dos Santos, a Swedish prosecutor specializing in organized crime, told Swedish broadcaster SVT that the tech giants should ban such assassination ads — a logical proposition, you might think. But the ads keep popping up, because the tech giants can’t seem to enforce their existing rules.

The Swedish gang dystopia is indeed spreading to Denmark. In recent weeks, 17 Swedish citizens have been arrested for violent crimes in the neighboring country. Some were already part of rival gangs with Danish partners. The Foxtrot gang, for example, is an affiliate of the Danish gang Loyal to Familia. Their enemies include another Sweden-based gang led by Ismail Abdo, who is also believed to be hiding in Turkey. The Swedish gangs have also expanded their activities (i.e. drug trafficking) and feuds into Norway. This summer, Norwegian police reported that Foxtrot had even begun recruiting youth from government-run treatment centers. Other Swedish-based youths are committing contract killings elsewhere. Within a week this month, three Swedish teenagers were arrested in Denmark for three separate attempted murders.

Now the Danish government has introduced identity checks at the border, which normally do not exist, since both countries are part of the Schengen area. On August 21, Strommer traveled to Copenhagen for talks with his Danish counterpart. There is no doubt about his willingness to combat the scourge that is affecting not only Sweden but also its neighbors. However, Strommer may have encountered ministerial dysfunction in its purest form: there is little he and his fellow ministers can do to stop these ruthless gangs and the scourge they spread. Would it even be possible to introduce prison sentences for under-15s?

Meanwhile, the Social Democrats sit in opposition, safely removed from the disaster they naively allowed to blossom during their eight years in power, some in coalition with the Greens. Many ministers from the previous centre-right government, which also held power for eight years and shares responsibility for the tragedy, are similarly unaccountable, having moved on to the private sector or provincial governorships.

When the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition came to power in the UK after the 2010 election, Liam Byrne, a junior minister of the exchequer, left a note in a drawer of the office for his successor: “I’m afraid there is no more money.” If Strommer’s predecessors had had a similar dry sense of humor, they could have left a note in his drawer saying: “There are no more solutions.” But they didn’t just lack a sense of humor; they also lacked the insight to understand how the culture of violence they had allowed to fester could undermine not just local communities but the whole country, and other countries as well. “The use of violence by gangs threatens the safety and freedom of the general public, they threaten public servants working for our social agencies, they try to infiltrate our courts, our police, our prisons,” Strommer told the Financial Times this month. Like many criminologists, Strommer predicts that it will take at least a decade to ensure that today’s preschoolers do not turn to violent crime when they reach their teens.

At their meeting on August 21, Strommer and Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard pledged to strengthen coordination with third countries to ensure that more criminals wanted in Sweden and Denmark for violent crimes are extradited there. Turkey is likely to be at the top of the list. But the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who so fiercely opposed Sweden’s accession to NATO on the grounds that Sweden refused to extradite Kurdish militants, is unlikely to shy away from helping the Swedish criminal justice system. We can only wish Strommer well.

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