Sweden

After the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and Finland abandoned generations of neutrality to apply for membership in the NATO military alliance. However, there is already a gang war going on in Swedish streets, and it has nothing to do with Russia.

Between January and May 2023, Swedish police recorded on average one completed bomb detonation every two days. If you add the bombs that were in preparation, but not yet detonated, Sweden experienced one explosives-related crime per day. Rival gangs increasingly continue to target each other’s relatives with revenge attacks.

Scandinavia’s answer to Pablo Escobar orchestrates much of the growing violence from Turkey

STOCKHOLM—One evening in early March, Swedish police asked the country’s version of “America’s Most Wanted” to broadcast photos of two young men wanted for a shooting on a rival drug gang in Uppsala, north of Stockholm.

Three hours later, unknown gunmen knocked on the door of Serdar Sarihan, the father of one of the suspects. They shot him dead while his wife and their other children were upstairs.

The killing, which Swedish authorities say they believe was a revenge shooting, opened a new chapter of brutality in a wave of gang violence that has turned Sweden, usually known as a peaceful welfare state, into a gun-homicide hot spot in Europe.

The size of the mirgrant population which Sweden is now trying to curtail, has passed the point of no return. Death knell for the EU?

“Rather than leading to meltdown, the migration crisis is leading to the fission of Europe,” wrote Stanford historian Niall Ferguson five years ago. “I am increasingly convinced that the migration crisis will be seen by future historians as the fatal ingredient that dissolved the EU”.

Swedish police, in a press release published on Thursday, April 6th, announced that they had appealed the decision by Sweden’s Court of Administrative Law to overturn a decision by the policing authority to ban Quran-burning protests.

“The police authority believes that the issue is fundamentally important and that it is, therefore, urgent that it be examined by a higher authority,” the Swedish police wrote on their website.

Not for the police to make such a ruling.

A 10-year-old Dutch girl who got stabbed in the stomach in Gothenburg city center on Thursday afternoon is in a “serious but stable” condition, the police said on Friday. The police have found no connection between the 35-year-old man in custody for the stabbing and the young victim or her family. The suspect has a criminal record and mental health problems, local media reported.

… According to the local broadcaster SVT, the suspect has several convictions on his criminal record, including for the aggravated robbery of a watch shop using an automatic rifle and for assaulting a fellow prisoner without provocation. The man has mental health problems, likely aggravated by drug addiction, the broadcaster wrote.

A 10 year old Dutch girl visiting relatives in Gothenburg was stabbed by a 35 year old man shouting Allah Akbar.

He was restrained by members of the public. pic.twitter.com/QtUsVhDYme

— David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) March 3, 2023

Nation with peaceful reputation averaged one shooting or bombing a day last month

Swedish police chiefs have warned that crime is hitting “extremely serious and unprecedented” levels after 19 shootings in Stockholm and the surrounding towns since Christmas.

Gun violence between gangs competing over the increasingly lucrative drugs trade has been rising since the turn of the millennium, culminating in a record 63 fatal shootings last year. The country also has the European Union’s highest numbers of drug offences, burglaries and thefts per head, according to the bloc’s statistics agency.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Swedish government again sought Friday to discredit claims that Swedish social service agencies kidnap Muslim children, saying Sweden was again seeing a “systematized” and “extensive” disinformation campaign.

“This campaign has now gained momentum again,” said Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

“This is false. This is not true. Sweden does not kidnap children. The social services do not kidnap children,” Kristersson told a press conference. ”Neither Muslim nor other children.”

He said that social workers and other employees are being “exposed on social media and are being threatened.”

Seriously they’d be doing the poor kids a favour.

At an impromptu shrine outside a shopping centre on the southern reaches of the Stockholm’s commuter belt, teenagers gatherered before photographs of a boy with a faintly goofy smile and voluminous black curls that made him look a little younger than his 15 years.

Ali Shafaei was shot dead here in Skogas on Saturday, the latest victim of a surge of gang violence around the Swedish capital in which at least four teenagers and young men have been killed since Christmas. Over the past month there has, on average, been a shooting or a bombing every day. “It’s extreme out there,” Nikoi Djane, a former criminal turned criminologist, said. “It’s tit for tat. It’s like a game to them now.”