NEED TO KNOW

Metastasis

SWEDEN

Criminals in Sweden are making big money selling strawberries at roadside stands. These allegations might seem silly, but as the Week detailed, many strawberry sellers likely have links with gang leaders like Ismail Abdo, a drug dealer who allegedly has ordered killings in turf wars with his rivals.

As the National reported, Abdo might even have connections to Iranian intelligence, which has hired criminal gangs to attack Israelis, Iranian dissidents and other foreign nationals in Sweden. Abdo and his ilk are also suspected of hiring minors, or “child soldiers”, to assassinate people, added Foreign Policy, noting that 93 teens aged 14 and younger were implicated in murder cases in Sweden.

These developments are why the number of fatal shootings has doubled in Sweden compared with 2013 as drug- and gun-related crimes have also increased, the Guardian reported. Last year, gunmen killed 55 people in 363 separate shootings, according to Reuters.

Many Swedes, especially conservative politicians, have blamed migrants who have come to Sweden in the past decade to flee violence at home and seek out opportunities in Europe. Others have argued that much of the violence occurs in the country’s poorest districts, suggesting migrants and other underclass communities are also the victims of this scourge.

Then there are those who wonder if the Swedish state is to blame. Many of the kids involved in these crimes lived in youth care homes, where Swedish authorities often send minors who, under Swedish law, can’t be tried as adults, Reuters explained.

The origins of Sweden’s crime wave are debatable. A bigger problem, meanwhile, is that the Scandinavian country is exporting this violence to its neighbors.

Norwegian police, for example, believe Swedish gangsters were to blame for a recent bombing in Drøbak near the two countries’ border, Politico reported. “It is serious,” said Kjetil Tunold, who oversees organized crime at the Norwegian National Bureau of Investigation, in a Euractiv story. “We are afraid that the development we have seen in Sweden will infect us.”

Meanwhile, Denmark recently announced new border controls with Sweden after Swedish teenagers were involved in shootings in the Danish capital Copenhagen, the National Review wrote.

Swedish crime has even spread more than 1,200 miles away to Iceland, the North Atlantic island with a population of around 400,000, which has seen an average of fewer than one murder a year – until recently, with seven people murdered just from January until mid-September this year, the European Conservative wrote. It was Sweden-based criminals that recently set a car on fire in the country. Some wonder if crime will rise, undercutting Iceland’s status as one of the happiest countries in the world, wrote the Reykjavíck Grapevine.

In Sweden, the trend could cost the country much more, wrote Stratfor, a think tank: “If unresolved, rising violent criminal activity could exacerbate social tensions, cause political instability and lead to a gradual deterioration of the country’s business environment.”

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