Panic in Denmark as 'child soldiers' pour in from city in Sweden 'as dangerous as Baghdad'

To Danish people, Sweden often feels like a pretentious older brother. More concerned with virtue signalling on a global stage, Danes believe their Scandinavian neighbour struggles to have the difficult conversations their bold stances on topics like immigration require.

“It's kind of this friendly but competitive relationship,” explains Danish criminologist Kasper Fisker. “The narrative in Demark is that Sweden is so busy being a humanitarian superpower that they totally forget to question whether immigration is always good.” 

Over the past decade the strength of the sibling bond has been tested by Sweden’s violent crime levels. A country known for being peaceful and liberal has been rocked by skyrocketing levels of gun violence and near-daily gangland bombings. 

The city of Malmo, linked to the Danish capital of Copenhagen across the Øresund Bridge, is now deemed more dangerous than Baghdad thanks to an influx of international crime groups.

It’s got so bad the the Swedes are now exporting violence to their neighbour. 

Last August, an irrate Danish justice minister revealed that in five months there had been 25 incidents involving Swedish citizens in Denmark, a period which also saw five teenagers charged with serious crimes including attempted murder.

“Criminal groups in Denmark have hired Swedish child soldiers to carry out criminal deeds,” Peter Hummelgaard told reporters at the time. “What is happening on the other side of Øresund?”

In an effort to answer that question experts like Fisker, who is also Head of Office for Crime Prevention in the Albertslund region of Denmark, are increasingly heading over the bridge themselves.

“I find myself working tin Sweden more and more,” Fisker adds.

Amongst the priorities for Fisker is uncovering the reasons why 15 and 16 year olds in Sweden, sometimes with no criminal history, become hired guns for ruthless gangsters in another country.

Although, so far, his findings could be applied to many places around the world.  

“It's the same old story with young individuals not feeling that they have any possibilities in life,” he says. 

“They're bored and they don't have particular success in school and they don't necessarily have physical networks, but they have the internet. 

“All of a sudden they're offered something that could disrupt this entire hopeless life and it's exciting. 

“They misunderstand the difference between respect and fear. [They think] if they do something like this they get respect from people.

“They also get rewards, not that big rewards, but between £10,000 and £30,000. That's a lot of money when you're 15 or 16 years old.”

Fisker says that once the teens have been recruited using social media or messaging apps, like Telegram, the violent acts themselves are presented as very straightforward.

“They're told that all they have to do is take this train and meet up in some apartment,” he adds. “From then on, they're going to get armed and someone will take care of them and tell them exactly what to do. 

“They come back to the apartment, get the money and then split. That sounds very easy and for guys with their set of possibilities it sounds a hell of a lot better than [their alternatives].”

One of the reasons teenagers have become hitmen in Sweden is because the country has laws that mean anyone under the age of 21 is handed a lighter sentence than an adult would. For example, in one famous case in Malmo a 15-year-old who murdered a gang leader in a busy shopping centre was sentenced to just four years in prison. 

However, in Denmark the approach to justice is far less forgiving. Back in 2020, three Swedes were jailed for life and two others got 20 years each for a double murder in Copenhagen.

Prosecutor Rasmus Kim Petersen used Danish laws related to gang crime to hand two of the men, who were under 18 at the time of the murders, double-decade prison terms. 

The Danish court revealed the killers were part of the Death Patrol gang from the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby and their victims from rival group, Shottaz, who operated in the same neighbourhood.

“They get a shock,” Fisker adds. “When they come to Denmark the Danish judicial system sees them get twice as long sentences.” 

Law enforcement co-operation these days between the two countries is very strong. Police officers from either country have permanent roles within their neighbour’s forces and there are a raft of preventative initiatives that work across borders.

Athough, according to Fisker, this wasn’t always the case.

“It wasn't very beautiful at first,” he says. “The political debate was was not very constructive. Denmark was [basically saying] to Sweden ‘you know, get your [stuff] together you can't avoid talking about these serious issues just because they are not nice’.”

Part of that ultimatum was in relation to immigration. Many Danes believed that their neighbours were so busy trying to be seen as ‘welcoming’ that they were unable to face up to the role immigration has played in the country's crimewave.

It’s been well documented that leaders of criminal groups in Sweden orchastrate violence whilst living in Turkey or Iraq.

Fisker believes that Denmark has not suffered the problems of its neighbour because of a combination of the country not “dismantling the welfare state” and by having a more considered approach to migration.

“The problems they've had on this [around] immigration was in fact because lobbyists of big companies [were] trying to get [a] workforce into Sweden [through] politicians. 

“They have this version of themselves as being very humanitarian when it was actually money [behind the migration].

“Then all the big companies pulled themselves out of these areas and all of a sudden you had 9,000 Somalis without the work. This obviously creates problems. 

“They dismantled their welfare state so the problems are just evolving and have become worse and worse.”