Denmark’s justice minister has denounced organized criminal gangs hiring Swedish teenagers to carry out deadly shootings on Danish soil on Monday, saying it “reflects a totally sick, depraved culture of violence.”
Peter Hummelgaard said that since April, there have been 25 instances involving young Swedes being hired by Danes to commit crimes across the Øresund strait.
Hummelgaard was reacting after Danish government-owned broadcaster TV2 showed him a printout from an encrypted Swedish chat of people seeking hitmen to gun down named people in Denmark, along with a price list ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 kronor ($28,500 to $47,500).
“It’s terrifying in every way and it makes me angry. Really, really angry,” the justice minister said, adding he would “put pressure on Sweden so that they also take responsibility for these things.”
Last week, Hummelgaard announced that Denmark would be increasing inspections on trains across the Øresund bridge linking the Danish capital with the city of Malmö in Sweden.
He added that police would have access to more resources to monitor car traffic on the road crossing.
“We are increasing surveillance, in part to increase security, but also to prevent hired Swedish child soldiers who come to Copenhagen to carry out tasks in connection with gang conflicts,” he said.
The government in Stockholm has been struggling with gang violence for years, while in Denmark, police have also seen violence between gangs but on a lesser scale.
‘Cannon Fodder’
One of the main criminal networks in Denmark is “Loyal to Familia,” a street gang that was banned in 2021. Danish police say it is feuding with a rival gang but have not specified which.“Their members are probably the ones who are stopped and searched most often by the police,” sociologist Aydin Soei told Danish broadcaster DR last week.
Soei said it was “convenient” for the gangs to use the Swedish teens as “cannon fodder”.
His comments came after a 17-year-old Swede was held in pre-trial detention for a shooting in Kolding, in Denmark’s west, and another, aged 16, was also held over another incident involving a firearm in the capital Copenhagen.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that it was “an eerie example that cynical criminals hire Swedish youths to commit crimes in Denmark. We will not accept that.”
Last year, authorities in Sweden estimated that 62,000 people in the country were linked to criminal gangs.
The gangs were found to frequently recruit members from immigrant neighborhoods, with most of the violence occurring in Sweden’s three largest cities: Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo.
In 2022, Sweden saw figures for gang-related shootings skyrocketing to 391, with 62 deaths, according to official police statistics, though the number has fallen somewhat since, with 164 shootings and 22 deaths recorded in the first seven months of this year.
In Denmark, some 1,257 people were known to authorities for having connections to organized crime at the end of last year, according to official figures.
The majority of the violence in the country was found to take place in Copenhagen and its suburbs.
Danish police recorded 21 cases of gang-related shootings in 2023, with four deaths, down from 33, with six deaths two years earlier. Police recorded two shootings and one death in the first quarter of 2024.
In recent years, Denmark has adopted a tougher stance on immigration and gang violence than their Scandinavian neighbors, prompting some politicians on the Swedish right to suggest Stockholm should emulate Copenhagen’s tactics.
Some of the measures have included forcibly moving non-Danes out of areas where they are majority and doubling punishments for some crimes.
