Sweden turns to military to help police combat gang crime

Sweden has asked its military to help police fight gang crime, following a sharp increase in deadly shootings and bomb attacks in the Scandinavian country. 

Ulf Kristersson, the centre-right prime minister, said after a meeting on Friday with the head of Sweden’s defence forces and its police that he would next week ask the military to help.

He would also look at changing the law to allow the armed forces to give even more assistance, he said.

“I cannot emphasise enough how serious the situation is. Sweden has never seen anything like it before. No other country in Europe sees anything like it currently,” Kristersson said in a televised address to the nation on Thursday night.

Police chiefs have said that Sweden is facing its most serious domestic security situation since the second world war as immigrant drug gangs engage in a bloody conflict.

Police believe the gangs are increasingly using children to commit the crimes, as those under 18 often go unpunished or receive low sentences from the courts.

Last year already set a record for the number of deadly shootings in Sweden, and this September is on track to become the worst month since records began.

“It is political naivete and cluelessness that has brought us here,” said the Swedish prime minister. “It is an irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration effort that has brought us here.

“Social exclusion and parallel societies feed the criminal gangs. There they can ruthlessly recruit children and train them as future killers,” he said.

Swedish news bulletins have been filled with a daily count of the shootings and bomb attacks that have begun to kill gang members’ relatives and innocent bystanders as well as those involved in gang activity. “Innocent people are being murdered and injured,” said Anders Thornberg, Sweden’s police chief.

Police have laid much of the blame for the violence, which has centred this month around the capital Stockholm, on a split within one of the country’s biggest drug gangs, led by a Kurdish immigrant to Sweden who is now holed up in Turkey.

Turkey is blocking Sweden’s application to Nato, saying that Stockholm needs to take more action against what it terms Kurdish terrorists. But some in Sweden argue their government should raise with authorities in Ankara the issue of Swedish criminals sheltered in Turkey.

The opposition Social Democrats, in power from 2014 until 2022, this week called for the government to draft in the military to protect government buildings and allow the police to investigate the violence.

Kristersson said “everything was on the table”. He added: “We must hunt the gangs, and we must defeat the gangs . . . We will do what is necessary to restore order in Sweden.”

Thornberg said on Friday that the military could help with surveillance, logistics including trucks, and data analysis.