It is pretty much a race to see which Western European country implodes, and splits open like Judas; “burst open in the middle" (Acts 1:18). Sweden may win the race. Where once Sweden had one of the lowest gun violence deaths per capita in Europe, 20 years ago, but now, thanks to immigration, it has 2.5 times the European average, even with strict gun control, at least for the native white Nordics.
As well, Sweden has become a war zone, with gang warfare between rival gangs, mainly ethnics involving vicious bomb attacks that have killed innocent people, as well as gang members; see below for the gruesome details. Authorities are seeing an increasing number of crimes being committed by the young, as the penalties in the unlikely scenario of being caught by the police, are lower than for the hardened criminals and urban terrorists, and they are being groomed for a life of prison-crime-prison …
“In the early hours of Thursday, a loud explosion ripped through a quiet residential street of new-build family homes just north of the Swedish city of Uppsala.
Soha Saad, 24, was killed in the blast. She lived with her parents, and had recently qualified as a teacher. In footage of the aftermath, her mother can be heard screaming for her daughter, cursing the nation to which they once fled.
Saad was one of three victims of gangland violence in a violent 12-hour spell last week, and one of 12 people to be killed in September - Sweden's deadliest month since December 2019.
In the same 12 hours, an 18-year-old rapper was shot dead at the Mälarhöjden sports ground in Fruängen in southern Stockholm in a brazen attack during a football training session, and hours later one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Jordbro, south of the capital.
The trio were the latest people killed after being caught up in 'terrorist-like' gangland violence that has gripped Sweden, with stories of assassinations, child soldiers and bomb attacks regularly making the front pages of the country's newspapers.
The bomb in the early hours of Thursday morning, set outside Saad's family home in the dead of night, is thought to have been meant for he neighbours – relatives of a man who is now the most notorious criminal in modern Swedish history.
'Kurdish Fox', whose real name is Rawa Majid, became a household name in Sweden last Christmas when the feud between the 37-year-old's criminal network Foxtrot and the Dalen gang, led by Mikael 'The Greek' Tenezos, 25, spread fear in several cities as they fought over shares of the country's highly lucrative drugs market.
The feud between the two gang leaders soon seemed to cool off, yet several violent crimes connected to Foxtrot involving teenagers and young adults – both as offenders and victims – would occur over the months that followed.
This week, a 16-year-old boy is on trial, accused of executing a 15-year-old at point blank range in a sushi restaurant in the Stockholm suburb of Skogås in January.
Ali Shafaei had escaped Taliban persecution and fled Afghanistan in 2019.
The attack was carried out on the orders of an ally of Majid, according to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
The ally, 20-year-old Ibou Badije – operating under the nickname 'Louise Gucci' – was recently sentenced to 18 years in prison for ordering a series of shootings carried out by young teens earlier this year.
The shootings included one in Fruängen, southern Stockholm, on January 20 where the 14-year-old gunmen filmed themselves as they fired an assault rifle thorough a front door, posting the footage online.
At the end of July, 14-year-old friends Mohamed Suleiman and Layth Al-Azzawi were reported missing. They were later found dead in two separate woodland locations – one north and one south of Stockholm.
The Expressen newspaper reports that the teenagers had 'sold guns belonging to the Foxtrot network run by 'Kurdish Fox' Rawa Majid'.
Majid was born in Iraqi Kurdistan, but grew up in Uppsala, a university city about an hour's drive north of the capital Stockholm.
He began his professional career selling ice cream, but soon moved on to violent crime and narcotics before graduating to running a drugs smuggling ring.
In 2019 he left the country with his young family and has since obtained a 'golden visa' citizenship in Turkey thanks to £200,000 in property investments, SVT reports.
As Sweden has no extradition deal with Turkey, authorities' hands are tied.
Also in hiding in Turkey is Rawa Majid's former second-in-command: 33-year-old convicted drug dealer Ismail Abdo, who would use the aliases 'Dr Phil' and 'The Strawberry' to help Majid control their criminal empire via encrypted apps.
According to public service broadcaster SVT, the former brothers-in-arms turned on each other earlier this year, when one betrayed the other over a drug deal.
On Thursday, September 7, a 60-year-old woman was shot dead in her home in Uppsala. She was 'Strawberry's' mother.
Retribution for the women's killing came a few days later when a home in the same city was targeted by a hail of bullets.
The inhabitants had no known gangland connections, however, their neighbour is found to be Rawa Majid's mother's law.
As with 24-year old Soha Saad, who at this point still had three weeks to live, they happen to reside next door to the wrong person.
'The internal split in the Foxtrot network has made the core persons in the group - people who had previously been relatively safe in their £1.5m villas in Bodrum - more vulnerable', Diamant Salihu, a journalist who has written several books on gang violence in Sweden, tells Dagens Nyheter.
Former friends, who know each others secrets, have become enemies, which is one reason why the violence has escalated to this degree.
Twenty years ago, Sweden had one of the lowest gun violence deaths per capita in Europe. Now it is at the top of the league, with 2.5 times the European average.
Between September 10 and September 28, 11 people died and several others were injured, in a total of 32 shootings and bombings, Expressen reports.
They include 13-year-old Milo, 19-year-old Giovanni Farias, 17-year-old Abdullah Janabi and an 18-year-old 'famous rapper' who was shot dead in front of dozens of children at a sports field in Fruängen, south of Stockholm.
All had known connections to Foxtrot.
A number of attacks also targeted persons with family ties to either Team 'Strawberry' or Team 'Kurdish Fox' – or missed the intended victim entirely.
A 25-year-old was killed with bullets reportedly meant for a relative of Rawa Majid, and a 70-year-old blind man was shot dead at the bar of his favourite pub.
The elderly grandparents of a Majid-ally were thankfully unharmed when someone fired a weapon through their window.
There was also, of course, Soha Saad.
'It seems that several of the perpetrators of the wave of violence are not equipped for the type of mission that they have taken on,' Expressen's crime correspondent Kim Malmgren told the paper's readers last week.
'No wonder considering how many of them are young boys – 13, 14, 15 years old – whose radicalisation into the criminal environment has been at record speed.
'They have very little weapons skills, no bombing skills. As several crimes testify, some of the perpetrators do not seem to be great map readers either,' he wrote.
While the gang leaders in their late 20s and 30s are enjoying the fruits of their illegal labours hidden away in countries like Turkey, Spain, Mexico and even the UK, their soldiers in Sweden are growing increasingly younger.
Convicted criminals under 18 are sent to care homes or young offenders institutions and those under 21 have their age taken into consideration, meaning significantly shorter sentences.
This has birthed the underworld expression 'take a four to become a 100-man' – meaning that by committing a serious offense on behalf of an older gang leader (and do less time in prison than an adult career criminal) they gain status and notoriety.”