One Swedish City Has A Higher ISIS Recruitment Rate Than Any Other In Europe

Gothenburg, Sweden sends more terrorists to fight with Islamist groups per head of population than any other city in Europe, a senior police figure has revealed.

Sweden’s second largest city is comparatively small at half a million inhabitants compared to the second cities of many European nations, but the people living there seem to be remarkably determined to go big on one thing: Islamism. In addition to chronic violent gang crime, the city is also a major exporter of Islamists, many of who travel to the near east to wage jihad.

Speaking to local newspaper the Göteborgs-Posten, former city chief of police turned head of ‘integration police’ Ulf Boström made the revelation that of all the Swedish citizens and residents who had travelled to Syria and Iraq, nearly half had come from Gothenburg alone.

He believed the criminal gang culture in Sweden, which originated with ‘Hells Angels’ biker bangs in the 20th century, but is now dominated by foreign religious and ethnic groups, had a large impact on the high recruitment rate in the city as Islamism fed off “young men who believe they have no future”.

Speaking of the Islamic State, who have been blamed for Friday’s terror attacks in Paris Mr. Boström said: “This is the network that has the strength, intellectual capacity and ability to coordinate. There are no fools. They know their opponents”.

He said along with Belgium, Sweden was one of Europe’s two “sleeper countries” which are easy for Islamists to hide without too much attention from the authorities, a statement backed up by a number of recent terror attacks where the perpetrators have crossed borders from Belgium to France, where enforcement is stronger.

The officer criticised the Swedish state for “behaving naively” when it came to Islamist extremism, and particularly returning jihadists coming back to Sweden from the Levant. He said that “my experience says that the ones who are allowed to go home have been approved by their superiors. These are people who will not tell. Those whose loyalty is not 100 per cent sure”.

Of the estimated 100 jihadists who have already returned to Sweden from fighting abroad, not a single one has been prosecuted under counter-terror laws, reports TheLocal.se.

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