Sweden’s spreading crime epidemic alarms its neighbors

MOSS, Norway — Christer Nersund was at his lakeside home on the edge of the Norwegian town of Moss one night last winter when he heard the shots. 

Nersund, a 38-year-old advertising manager, thought it was a car accident at first. But as he saw emergency vehicles racing toward a nearby sports hall and park, he realized it was something more serious. 

Across the water, Swedish gangsters had tracked down a rival and tried to kill him, police reports suggest.

As children practiced handball just meters away, the man was left to bleed out in the snow. He was airlifted to a hospital and ultimately survived. Three men have since been arrested in Sweden in connection with the attack and have been extradited to Norway where they remain in custody. 

“I’m not easily scared,” Nersund said. “But what happened that night rattled people here.”

Gang crime is the biggest policy challenge facing the Swedish government today. Some 195 shootings and 72 bombings have taken 30 lives this year alone and have undermined Swedish citizens’ sense of security across the country. The shooting in Moss was an early sign that Sweden’s domestic crisis is spilling over into neighboring states. 

In Norway, former Justice Minister Sylvi Listhaug called on her country to be vigilant against a slide toward what she called “Swedish conditions.”

Nordic consternation

Norwegian police suspect a bombing in the nearby town of Drøbak was also the work of Swedish gang members. They believe that Swedish drug gangs are now operating in all of Norway’s 12 police districts after recently expanding operations. 

Meanwhile, an increasing flow of Swedish criminals into nearby Denmark has been reported by Danish authorities, who note that many of the recruits are very young. 

In early September, Danish police charged two Swedish teenagers with attempted murder, saying they had been hired by cooperating Swedish and Danish organized crime gangs. The police said they are currently working around 25 similar cases.

“Child soldiers are being recruited by gangs to attack each other,” Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told reporters recently. “What is happening on the other side of Øresund?” he said, referring to the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden. 

To be called out by its Scandinavian neighbors is a shocking and humbling development for Sweden, a country long seen as a European bastion of social stability. Sweden’s security situation risks undermining the reputation of the country at home and abroad, observers say. 

“This is embarrassing for Sweden and it looks terrible,” said Fredrik Furtenbach, a political commentator with Swedish national radio SR, just last August. 

Denmark’s Hummelgaard called Sweden’s Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer to Copenhagen for emergency talks over the issue in late August. 

After the meeting, Strömmer acknowledged the validity of concerns about Swedish gang criminality affecting its neighbors, along with how Sweden needs to do more to stop the problem at source. 

Sweden’s center-right government, which won power in 2022 backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, has vowed to implement what it called a “paradigm shift” in how it tackles crime. 

It has increased sentences for gun offenses and is looking at lowering the age at which criminals can be held responsible for their actions. It has also rolled out a new system of stop-and-search zones. 

But the crackdown has yet to have a serious impact, and the shootings and bomb attacks targeting gang members and their families continue both in Sweden — and abroad.  

Over recent months, Swedish gangsters have been shot dead by rivals in Bosnia, Turkey and Iraq. 

Speaking in early September, Sweden’s Social Democrat opposition leader Magdalena Andersson said the government “lacks a plan” to prevent gangs from recruiting new members. 

Blood in the snow

Police suspect the Nov. 28 attack in Moss began with a text message hours before the shooting containing a time (17:00) and a meeting location (the city sports hall, Mossehallen) sent by the Swedish suspects to the victim, a Swedish man on his 30s living in the town, according to police reports cited by Norway’s national broadcaster NRK. 

The suspects also texted the type of car they would be arriving in: a Peugeot 208. 

Such a chain of events conforms to a method regularly used by Swedish gangsters where they lure out an intended target by pretending to be proposing a business deal or relaying a message from a contact. 

As the victim approached the car, parked close to the entrance of Mossehallen, a volley of shots rang out. The sound of nine gunshots was captured on a CCTV recording at 16:52. 

As police raced to the scene, the suspects fled onto a nearby motorway and south over the border into Sweden, police believe. 

Over the weeks which followed, Swedish and Norwegian police combed CCTV and other records to track down the Peugeot to a rental agency in the town of Vetlanda in Sweden. 

In late December last year, two men were arrested in Sweden’s city of Gothenburg in connection with the case. One was believed to have rented the car. A third man was arrested in Stockholm after police searched his phone in relation to another suspected crime and found links to the attack in Moss, NRK reported. 

The citizens of Moss remember the shooting clearly. 

“We have criminals here, it is not like we are angels,” said a 16-year-old student from the town, granted anonymity due to security concerns, who was recently walking close to the site of the shooting. “But this kind of violence is something we don’t really have — and we don’t want,” he said.

Visited on a recent weekday, Mossehallen seemed an unlikely place for an attempted murder. Groups of schoolchildren arrived by bus carrying kit for sports lessons. Others completed school exercises in the adjacent park where a sculpture of two giant deck chairs had been graffitied with the words “love” and “faith.”

Out walking his dog past the hall, Nersund — the local resident — said it was shocking that Sweden’s brutal gang violence had spread to his quiet neighborhood. He added how Norwegians had watched for years with concern as gang crime in Sweden spread across the country and became more violent.

He didn’t expect any quick fixes. 

“The problems in Sweden took a long time to reach the level where they are today, and they will probably take as long to solve,” said Nersund.