Swedish police say they have recovered explosives after being called out to 280 addresses of people taking advantage of the county’s “hand grenade amnesty” – but have not recovered any actual grenades.
Police said that since the beginning of the hand grenade amnesty in October, they have managed to investigate locations across in Skåne, Blekinge, Kronoberg and Kalmar, SVT reports.
Bengt Schuster, regional munitions director of the police, explained that police had received more calls than they initially expected but found nothing highly out of the norm.
“On many old forest and agricultural properties, it has been dynamite that was once used to remove stones and stumps,” he said.
“The only thing we have not found so far is probably hand grenades,” Schuster added.
The grenade problem in Sweden has been one of the worst in Europe with well over 100 attacks and other related incidents occurring in the country over the last eight years, and gang crime expert Gunnar Appelgren commenting, “It is extreme in a country that is not in war.”
In one incident in early 2018, a man was killed by a hand grenade at the Varby Gard subway station in Stockholm. A 45-year-old woman was also injured and required hospital treatment as a result of the blast.
Sweden has become the focus of illegal arms from the Balkan region, according to Bosnian prosecutor Goran Glamocanin, who said the Scandinavian nation had become one of the largest markets for weapons from the region including rifles and hand grenades.
As a result of the weapons trafficking, grenades have become relatively easy for criminals to purchase, according to the co-ordinator of the Stockholm police force’s gang conflict programme.