
Originariamente Scritto da
9999
In Svezia. Indovinate perche'?
@
Dario
@
magoo
Nulla da dire?
https://nct-cbnw.com/an-explosion-a-...t-is-going-on/
By Patrick Norén
Sweden averaged over one explosion per day in January 2025, marking a disturbing new high for the country once renowned for being quiet, peaceful, and safe.
On November 12, 2019, the BBC published an article entitled, “Sweden’s 100 explosions this year: what’s going on?”. At the time, the author described the 97 attacks in the first nine months of the year as “unprecedented”. Five years later, however, Sweden’s problem with explosive attacks has ballooned to a level far exceeding what it once was, leading us to ask the same question again: what is going on?
It is important to recognize that statistics vary, and there are very often discrepancies between the data supplied by the Swedish Police and SVT, the country’s national TV and radio broadcaster. According to the Swedish Police, the number of explosions in December 2024 totaled 22. However, SVT put this number at 27. For January 2025, SVT reports that Sweden saw 32 explosions, putting the Nordic country on course for its worst year ever for explosive attacks.
There were three separate explosions just on the night of January 23 alone, in Uppsala, Haninge, and Stockholm. This was followed by two more explosions on the night of January 24, in Malmö and Eskilstuna. Or, to put it a different way, in a country of only 10.5m people, there were five explosions in five different towns and cities across two nights.
Even the night after I started researching this article, from January 27 to the morning of January 28, there were three more explosions across Sweden: two in southern Stockholm and one in Ödåkra near Helsingborg.
Means, Motives, Opportunities
It has long been widely acknowledged that the bomb attacks and shootings – of which Sweden has one of the highest rates in Europe – are linked to gang violence and drug trafficking. In an interview with SVT in January 2025, the Swedish Police’s Erik Lindblad said that they had seen an increase in what he termed “instrumental violence” where it is not people that are targeted but instead “fixed objects such as staircases and businesses”.
The reasons for the bombings are, in several cases, “suspected to be motivated by extortion against businesses or people linked to businesses and their families”, according to the Swedish authorities’ crisis information website. Mr. Lindblad also noted that the attacks can often be part of wider criminal conflicts, although these cases are often an exception to the rule, in their opinion.
Serious crime and the actors within those networks are often behind the attacks, according to Mr. Lindblad. “They use violence to get their way, irrespective of if it is revenge, or a battle over a drugs market, or extortion,” he said.
Thankfully, given that the explosions normally target doors, staircases, or businesses, the explosions do not always result in injuries and rarely kill people. Nevertheless, two were injured in an explosion in southern Stockholm early on January 18, two were injured in an explosion in the Stockholm suburb of Farsta on January 24, while one man was injured by a blast in the early hours of January 27 while he was sleeping in the town of Upplands-Bro, north-west of Stockholm.
Most famously, however, a 24-year-old newly qualified teacher, Soha Saad, was killed by an explosion in September 2023 as she slept on her sofa in her home in Fullerö, near the city of Uppsala. Reports from the time said that she could have been neighbors with a relative of a gang member, but she was innocent, had no connections to gang violence, and was likely not the intended target.
In November last year, five people were sentenced to prison for crimes related to three explosions in September 2023 including the one that killed Soha Saad. Two were sentenced to life in prison, and the prosecutor Thomas Bälter had previously said that there was a “clear link” between the attacks and a conflict within the Foxtrot criminal network.
Hand grenades, powerful pyrotechnics, or fireworks are being “increasingly used” for such attacks. While fireworks can be obtained fairly easily and dynamite can be stolen from building sites, hand grenades are a frequently preferred modus operandi as they come pre-assembled, are smuggled into Sweden – often from the Balkans – by gangs, and are used to injure and intimidate rivals when the supply of other explosives and the knowledge to weaponize them has decreased thanks to successful prosecutions of known bomb makers.
Diplomatic Difficulties
Sweden’s problem with violent organized crime has become so serious that it has spilled over into its neighbors. Three Swedes were arrested in February 2024 on suspicion of involvement in a bombing in the Norwegian town of Drøbak in October of the previous year.
On August 6, there was an explosion at a convenience store in Copenhagen after an object was thrown inside, and two Swedish citizens were arrested by police in Sweden shortly after. Then, two weeks later, another Swedish citizen in possession of two hand grenades was arrested in Denmark on suspicion of having been recruited to commit crimes on Danish soil. In the beginning of October, three Swedish men were arrested on suspicion of having thrown hand grenades at the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen.
In August 2024, the Danish Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard said that Danish criminal groups had hired Swedish “child soldiers” to commit crimes in Denmark no fewer than 25 times since April. Alongside implementing tighter checks on arrivals from Sweden, Hummelgaard also said that they will “of course put pressure on Sweden to take responsibility for these things”.
Furthermore, following a meeting between the Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and his Danish counterpart Mette Fredrickson in October about what could be done to tackle cross-border crime, the latter was unflinching in her diagnosis of the problem.
“There is unfortunately a very close relationship between foreign policy and criminalization today. Because when we look at organised crime, when we look at violence, when we look at drugs, then there is an overrepresentation in Denmark and in Sweden, especially with young men from non-Western backgrounds. And it is unsustainable.”