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Sweden Steps Up Fight in ‘Civil War’

SWEDEN

In late January, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi living in Sweden who had become known for staging anti-Islam protests involving the burning of the Quran, was shot to death on his balcony in the capital, Stockholm, as he was live streaming on TikTok.

In the week prior to the shooting, a relative of an internationally wanted drug dealer, Rawa Majid, was killed in a suburb just outside Stockholm and a career criminal was gunned down by a 17-year-old at a train station in the small university town of Lund. Meanwhile, that same month, there were more than 30 bombings across the country of 8 million people, five of them in Stockholm in one day. Police said they stopped at least 30 more.

“Sweden is in a low-intensity civil war,” said Swedish lawmaker Roger Richtof of the right-wing, populist Sweden Democrats. “The greatest threat to our culture and way of life lies within the country’s borders.”

While some say Richtof’s comments are exaggerating the situation, it is clear that Swedes are deeply concerned about how this once-peaceful, prosperous, low-crime nation has become a hub for transnational crime and the violence that accompanies it.

Already, the rise in organized crime has shifted the political landscape, long run by center-left Social Democrats that put in place its famously generous social safety net and made it a bastion of liberal values, progressiveness, and openness.

But now, the country is becoming known for having the highest rate of gun violence per capita in Europe – 55 people were killed in 363 shootings last year compared with a combined total of just six shooting deaths across Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

Much of the violence is being perpetrated by children, who are being hired by gangs – often based abroad – through social media, particularly Telegram, to do everything from spying and committing vandalism to violent acts, such as bombings and murder, police officials said. Children are being hired because they cannot be prosecuted as adults, they added, noting that they are being recruited by around 600 criminals who live abroad.

“We see 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds carry out horrific violent assignments as if they were extra jobs,” said Sweden’s national police chief Petra Lundh. “The assignments are communicated completely openly on digital marketplaces.”

As a result, Sweden rushed through legislation in late January to take effect later this year to allow police to wiretap children under 15 as part of an intensified crackdown on gang-related crime, as well as other measures that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Those measures include increased overall electronic surveillance, much tougher sentences, and so-called safety zones where police can search people without probable cause. The government had already created laws that allow the seizure of unexplained luxury goods, even from those not under investigation, and is considering new measures to tighten gun laws and ban semi-automatic weapons. It is also mulling stripping dual-citizens involved in gangs of their Swedish citizenship.

Swedish officials are, at the same time, pressuring tech platforms to prevent gangs from recruiting minors and they have sought help from the European Union. They are also working with countries such as Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates to extradite gang leaders based abroad.

Some worry about the erosion of civil rights and the rule of law because of these measures, Reuters said.

“They are playing with democracy and show no respect for due process,” Gudrun Nordborg of the opposition Left Party told the newswire. “We have built principles over a long time that must be followed, such as human rights, the constitution … And here we’re now on shaky ground.”

Many Swedes, especially – but not only – conservative politicians, have blamed migrants who have come to Sweden in the past decade, fleeing violence at home and seeking out opportunities in Europe, as well as failed integration policies. Others have countered that much of the violence occurs in the country’s poorest districts, suggesting migrants and other underclass communities are also the victims of the crime wave.

Regardless, the violence – which used to be contained in the poorer areas of Swedish cities – is now touching suburbs and small towns across the country.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s prison system is at a breaking point following a sharp rise in convictions linked to the upswing in crime. The Prison and Probation Service estimates that Sweden will need 27,000 prison beds by 2033, more than double its current capacity of 11,000.

Last month a government-appointed commission said the country could legally send inmates to serve their sentences in foreign prisons, a measure already employed by Belgium and Denmark, according to Euractiv.

Sweden is in talks with other nations about leasing prison space, officials say.

Regardless, neighboring countries, particularly Denmark and Norway, are concerned about the spillover effects of Swedish gang violence.

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

Meanwhile, Denmark instituted border controls with Sweden last year for the first time in years to try to contain security threats after Swedish teenagers were involved in more than 25 shootings in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

“Criminal groups in Denmark have hired Swedish child soldiers – that’s what I call them – to carry out criminal deeds,” said Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard, adding that he will also pressure Sweden to take responsibility, according to Danish media.

Swedes are also worried about how the rising gang violence impacts the business environment.

Already, the extortion of businesses has become a lucrative business model, officials say, with gangs singling out companies to shake down, telling them, “pay up or blow up.”

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