Criminal gangs in Denmark have begun to recruit “child soldiers” from Sweden to carry out attacks, with 25 such cases being recorded in the past four months alone.
This week, Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard revealed that gangs, such as the Loyal To Familia (LTF) headed up by Pakistani-heritage mobster Shuaib Khan, have taken to outsourcing criminal acts, such as shootings and grenade bombings on the streets of Denmark, to “child soldiers” from neighbouring Sweden.
According to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR), Hummelgaard said that authorities have recorded at least 25 instances of youths from Sweden being used by criminal networks in Copenhagen and other cities,
“Criminal groups in Denmark have hired Swedish child soldiers—that’s what I call them—to carry out criminal deeds,” the Justice Minister said.
“It is deeply disturbing that it can take place at all, and it is deeply disturbing that it is now taking place in Denmark.”
Hummelgaard said that police believe the majority of the crimes outsourced to the “child soldiers” were in the service of an ongoing gangland conflict between Loyal To Familia and another currently unidentified criminal network operating in Denmark.
LTF was banned as an organisation in 2018, and its leader, Shuaib Khan, was expelled from the country after being convicted of murder, however, the gang continues to operate with Khan pulling the strings from abroad.
“When it is that we try to ban some of the criminal gangs by judgment, we do not delude ourselves that the group will disappear. It is one of many tools we can use to curb them and make their lives miserable. But they will not disappear,” Minister Hummelgaard said.
“Right now, a conflict is taking place between people who are sitting in Iraq, Lebanon, Dubai, Turkey, and all sorts of other exciting places and taking a conflict with each other in the streets of Denmark with the help of Swedish henchmen. Of course, we will not put up with that,” he added.
Sociologist and expert on Danish gangs, Aydin Soei, said that because members of the LTF are closely monitored by authorities, it is more practical for the gang to outsource crimes to youths from Sweden as “cannon fodder.”
Swedish journalist Diamant Salihu said that Danish gangs are using social media to recruit their child soldiers from Sweden, with ads posted on social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat as well as on encrypted messaging services such as Telegram and Signal.
He said that emojis are often used to describe desired crimes, with an apple equating to a hand grenade attack and a water pistol indicating a murder for hire.
While Sweden previously stood as one of the most peaceful countries in Europe, the past decade of mass migration has seen the society radically transformed, with one in five people in the country now being foreign born. This has coincided with the emergence of gang warfare, with rampant bombings and shootings.
In response, the government in Stockholm has abandoned open-borders policies in a stunning about face, which is expected to see more people leave the country than arrive this year, driven by the departures of Iraqis, Syrians, and Somalis in concert with a reduction in those allowed in. Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said this week that “Sweden has stopped being an asylum immigration country.”