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Swedish police chief: 'Kids are contacting gangs to become killers'
More and more children are contacting criminal gangs in Sweden to offer their services as contract killers, the country's police chief said on Friday, after three people were murdered in 24 hours.
https://www.thelocal.se/20230929/swedish-police-chief-kids-are-contacting-gangs-to-become-killers
https://archive.ph/6voyF
Swedish police chief Anders Thornberg at the press conference on Friday. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT
Sweden has in recent years been in the grip of a bloody conflict between gangs fighting over arms and drug trafficking. That has escalated with internal fighting within a leading gang. Apartment buildings and homes across the country are frequently rocked by explosions. Shootings, once limited to disadvantaged areas, have become regular occurrences in public places in the usually tranquil, wealthy country.
"We have a situation where children are contacting criminal gangs to become killers," police chief Anders Thornberg told journalists. "The criminals are ruthless," Thornberg said, adding that the gangs also contacted people, often minors, and "furnished them with weapons and gave them the address in which to stage the attack".
Even the victims were often young. This month, 12 people were killed in shootings and explosions, the deadliest month in the past four years in Sweden. Senior police official Mats Lindström said he had seen many messages from young people contacting gangs for contract killings. In August 2023, there were 69 people aged under 18 in custody in Sweden, against 14 in the same month two years earlier.
On Thursday evening, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson vowed to defeat criminal gangs with the help of the military. "We are going to hunt down the gangs. We are going to defeat the gangs," Kristersson said in a televised address to the nation. "An increasing number of children and completely innocent people are affected by this extreme violence," Kristersson said. "Sweden has never seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this."
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also see
Timeline: Sweden's deadliest month for shootings in four years
https://www.thelocal.se/20230915/timeline-six-fatal-gang-shootings-in-one-week-in-sweden
https://archive.ph/ykpL5
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
show the paywalled part. our pater here in Sweden sometimes do the same thing, Denmark too)
Several Swedish criminal networks have recently increased their activity in Norway. In six police districts, they now have criminal cases where one or more of the accused are connected to the notorious Foxtrot network, which is controlled by Rawa Majid (37), better known by the nickname "The Kurdish Fox". But it is not only Foxtrot that operates in Norway.
Several Swedish criminal networks have recently increased their activity in Norway. In six police districts, they now have criminal cases where one or more of the accused are connected to the notorious Foxtrot network, which is controlled by Rawa Majid (37), better known by the nickname "The Kurdish Fox". But it is not only Foxtrot that operates in Norway.
Who's who in Sweden's gang conflict?
Sweden’s most recent wave of gang violence appears to be part of an internal conflict in the so-called Foxtrot gang. Who are the people involved and how did they become some of the most infamous people in Sweden?
https://www.thelocal.se/20230929/whos-who-in-swedens-gang-conflict
https://archive.ph/YtwDb
Background: Majid was born in Uppsala in 1986 and used to run an ice cream kiosk along with his mother as a teenager. His first offence was a break-in at the age of 19. He was handed an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence in 2009 for smuggling cocaine into Sweden. “He was one of a group of young people in Uppsala who took a wrong turn very early,” lawyer Tom Placht, who represented Majid in the case, told the TT newswire. “You could talk to some of them and even help to nudge them in the right direction, but there were others who you couldn’t even talk to – and he was one of them.” He was released from prison in spring 2015, and sentenced to prison again in July that year for assisting a kidnapping and assisting an aggravated assault.
In February 2018, he was released on probation, and was allowed to leave Sweden in 2019 due to a rising threat against him. A year later, in 2020, European police managed to crack encrypted messaging service Encrochat, used by organised criminals. One user, Foxkurdish, who was later identified as Majid, was of particular interest to police due to his organising role in major drug trades, as well as messages showing off thick wads of cash and Rolex watches, reported TT. A number of arrests were made and an international warrant was issued for Majid, who managed to evade capture and remain active by gaining Turkish citizenship, through buying a property in the country worth around 4 million kronor, Turkish media reported. Turkey, like Sweden, does not extradite its own citizens.
Abdo has previously been sentenced for weapons possession and serious drug offences, and was handed a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence in 2016. An international arrest warrant for serious drug offences was issued for him last autumn, as police suspect he was involved in smuggling 100 kilo of amphetamine into Sweden. He is also believed to be in Turkey, and has become a Turkish citizen.
What happened between Majid and Abdo to spark this conflict?
“It’s a proxy war we’re seeing right now,” Swedish crime reporter Katrin Krantz, from the Expressen newspaper, told The Local in our Sweden in Focus podcast. “The leadership in the Foxtrot gang, Rawa Majid, and his former ally, Ismail Abdo, have both been detained by Swedish prosecutors many times over for serious crimes, but they have moved to Turkey, and something has made them turn against each other.” According to Swedish public broadcaster SVT the conflict started when someone affiliated to Abdo was attacked. Shortly after, on September 6th, shots were fired at an address in Istanbul linked to Majid, which may have been an attempt to murder him. “We know there have been several attempted attacks in Turkey, but everything just seems to have imploded there,” Krantz said. On September 7th, Abdo’s mother, in her 60s and with no criminal record, was shot through an open window in a revenge killing in Gränby, Uppsala. “When Ismail Abdo’s mother was murdered in Uppsala, it turned into this spiral of violence that is now playing out, we’re seeing it in cities such as Uppsala, but also Norrköping and Stockholm, it’s everywhere where people who are connected to these people live," said Krantz. “I would say that that was the start of this very violent period we’ve seen.”
snip
Sweden’s most recent wave of gang violence appears to be part of an internal conflict in the so-called Foxtrot gang. Who are the people involved and how did they become some of the most infamous people in Sweden?
https://www.thelocal.se/20230929/whos-who-in-swedens-gang-conflict
https://archive.ph/YtwDb
Background: Majid was born in Uppsala in 1986 and used to run an ice cream kiosk along with his mother as a teenager. His first offence was a break-in at the age of 19. He was handed an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence in 2009 for smuggling cocaine into Sweden. “He was one of a group of young people in Uppsala who took a wrong turn very early,” lawyer Tom Placht, who represented Majid in the case, told the TT newswire. “You could talk to some of them and even help to nudge them in the right direction, but there were others who you couldn’t even talk to – and he was one of them.” He was released from prison in spring 2015, and sentenced to prison again in July that year for assisting a kidnapping and assisting an aggravated assault.
In February 2018, he was released on probation, and was allowed to leave Sweden in 2019 due to a rising threat against him. A year later, in 2020, European police managed to crack encrypted messaging service Encrochat, used by organised criminals. One user, Foxkurdish, who was later identified as Majid, was of particular interest to police due to his organising role in major drug trades, as well as messages showing off thick wads of cash and Rolex watches, reported TT. A number of arrests were made and an international warrant was issued for Majid, who managed to evade capture and remain active by gaining Turkish citizenship, through buying a property in the country worth around 4 million kronor, Turkish media reported. Turkey, like Sweden, does not extradite its own citizens.
Abdo has previously been sentenced for weapons possession and serious drug offences, and was handed a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence in 2016. An international arrest warrant for serious drug offences was issued for him last autumn, as police suspect he was involved in smuggling 100 kilo of amphetamine into Sweden. He is also believed to be in Turkey, and has become a Turkish citizen.
What happened between Majid and Abdo to spark this conflict?
“It’s a proxy war we’re seeing right now,” Swedish crime reporter Katrin Krantz, from the Expressen newspaper, told The Local in our Sweden in Focus podcast. “The leadership in the Foxtrot gang, Rawa Majid, and his former ally, Ismail Abdo, have both been detained by Swedish prosecutors many times over for serious crimes, but they have moved to Turkey, and something has made them turn against each other.” According to Swedish public broadcaster SVT the conflict started when someone affiliated to Abdo was attacked. Shortly after, on September 6th, shots were fired at an address in Istanbul linked to Majid, which may have been an attempt to murder him. “We know there have been several attempted attacks in Turkey, but everything just seems to have imploded there,” Krantz said. On September 7th, Abdo’s mother, in her 60s and with no criminal record, was shot through an open window in a revenge killing in Gränby, Uppsala. “When Ismail Abdo’s mother was murdered in Uppsala, it turned into this spiral of violence that is now playing out, we’re seeing it in cities such as Uppsala, but also Norrköping and Stockholm, it’s everywhere where people who are connected to these people live," said Krantz. “I would say that that was the start of this very violent period we’ve seen.”
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