Child soldiers, gang violence and murders for hire blight the once-famously peaceful country, journalist Diamant Salihu tells The Telegrap.
To show me just how bad gang crime has become in Sweden, all journalist Diamant Salihu has to do is forward a few mobile phone messages. At first glance, they look like spam, written in garish fonts and promising large sums of money, there to be earned. It’s only on closer examination that the purpose of the pistol and skull emojis becomes clear.
These are so-called “murder ads” – posted online by gang leaders, offering bounties to anyone willing to carry out the hits.
“All types of jobs are available,” reads one, promising up to one million krona (£78,000). “Age doesn’t matter”, adds another – explaining why many of Sweden’s new contract killers aren’t hardened hitmen, but children. Part of the problem, some say, is that Swedish law dictates anyone aged under 15 is too young to be prosecuted.
“We have so many child soldiers that nobody can count anymore,” sighs Salihu, an investigative reporter for SVT, Sweden’s answer to the BBC. “There are kids as young as 13 being arrested.”
Barely a week passes in Sweden today without a teenager being arrested for such a hit, keeping Salihu extremely busy, and the public in the grip of a national crisis like no other before it. A softly-spoken former tabloid journalist, the 41-year-old could be a character from a Scandi-noir novel, shining light in society’s darker corners. The body count on his beat, though, is far higher than any Stieg Larsson novel, and holds out little prospect of a satisfactory ending.
To show me just how bad gang crime has become in Sweden, all journalist Diamant Salihu has to do is forward a few mobile phone messages. At first glance, they look like spam, written in garish fonts and promising large sums of money, there to be earned. It’s only on closer examination that the purpose of the pistol and skull emojis becomes clear.
These are so-called “murder ads” – posted online by gang leaders, offering bounties to anyone willing to carry out the hits.
“All types of jobs are available,” reads one, promising up to one million krona (£78,000). “Age doesn’t matter”, adds another – explaining why many of Sweden’s new contract killers aren’t hardened hitmen, but children. Part of the problem, some say, is that Swedish law dictates anyone aged under 15 is too young to be prosecuted.
“We have so many child soldiers that nobody can count anymore,” sighs Salihu, an investigative reporter for SVT, Sweden’s answer to the BBC. “There are kids as young as 13 being arrested.”
Barely a week passes in Sweden today without a teenager being arrested for such a hit, keeping Salihu extremely busy, and the public in the grip of a national crisis like no other before it. A softly-spoken former tabloid journalist, the 41-year-old could be a character from a Scandi-noir novel, shining light in society’s darker corners. The body count on his beat, though, is far higher than any Stieg Larsson novel, and holds out little prospect of a satisfactory ending.
For the story he has pursued for the last decade is, in effect, one giant, unsolved murder mystery: why has Sweden, long the envy of the rest of Europe for its peace and prosperity, suddenly seeing so many gangland killings?
Why, in a land that prides itself on welcoming migrants, are so many gang members from migrant communities? And is it Swedish society that is the ultimate culprit, or the migrant communities themselves?
They are questions he has already addressed in two best-selling books of reportage, both kicking a hornet’s nest that liberal Sweden long preferred to leave well alone. His first, Until Everyone Dies, chronicled a war between two Somali street gangs that left nine young footsoldiers dead.
His latest, When Nobody’s Listening, charts the upper echelons of Swedish crime, as revealed through the police cracking of Encrochat, the encrypted mobile phone service used by gangsters Europe-wide.
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