The Underworld Podcast - Sweden's Gangland Child Soldiers

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Starting in the mid 2010's, Sweden’s gang wars transformed from neighborhood disputes into a national crisis, driven by splintered immigrant-area crews who now recruit teenage hitmen willing to kill for a few thousand dollars. At the center of the chaos, the bitter feud between Shottaz and Death Patrol, two rival networks whose bombings, kidnappings, and retaliatory shootings have turned Stockholm’s suburbs into warzones. The murder of chart-topping rapper Einár shocked the country, a killing that symbolized how deeply the underworld had bled into mainstream Swedish life. How did one of Europe's safest countries turn into a gangland battleground? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly, big board buck slot machine by aristocrat gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all.

Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building.

Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Summer 2015, in the suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden, and four childhood friends hatch an ambitious criminal plan for a group of mostly teenagers. Together, they're going to rob a foreign exchange office. You know, the kind of place tourists and immigrants exchange money. a big-time cash business, with lots of bills lying around, and way less security than a bank. And a much easier target than one. This sort of armed robbery is new for the group, but there are no strangers to crime. They've grown up in Sweden's Somali community in an area called Rinkeby that by the 2010s

is starting to develop a reputation for gangs, drugs, and violence. Violence that is starting to shock Sweden. The story starts decades earlier. In the 1960s and 1970s, Sweden undergoes a massive plan to build a million housing units in neighborhoods like Rinkeby for Sweden's working class. In the decades following, the country opens up its doors to immigrants needed for the labor supply who flock to these neighborhoods. And in recent years, they've taken in large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers, many from war-torn countries, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan. and while there are many success stories in some areas, especially with young men and teenagers, often second generation,

integration hasn't gone well. Who and what you blame for that? Well, the left and the right point to different reasons for why that might be. But all you need to know right now is that this group of friends represent a new trend in the Swedish underworld, something that's going to turn Sweden streets

into the most violent and dangerous in all of Europe over the next decade. Well, except for Albania, but you know how that goes. And it's all because of the proliferation of gangs from these neighborhoods. A few months earlier, the friends had teamed up and robbed the jewelry shop, using smoke bombs and firing gunshots in the air. The gun likely smuggled in from the Balkans. This plan, though, is a big step up for a group of use looking to score big.

And score big, they do. They hit the foreign exchange office, it's a success, and they make off with something like 200,000. $100,000 U.S. It's a massive score. There's just one little hiccup. One of the teens involved in the planning, he's cut out at the last minute. No heist work, no cash. Probably the biggest windfall he's ever heard of, but he's left with nothing. And he does not take this well. And he blames 20-year-old Ismail Aden, one of the plotters for what happens and starts to plot his revenge. It doesn't take long.

At the very same week, he's able to lure Ismail into a nearby forest, where he promptly guns him down, killing him. A few days later, another murder, a teenager killed, allegedly retaliation for the first murder. And so begins the gang war that defines Sweden in the late 2010s, as friends and family of these guys split into two gangs that will become infamous across Sweden and set the tone for the country's underworld. Death Patrol, sometimes called Death Squad, and Shattahs. Over a dozen will be dead in the coming years, likely more, as child hitman hired through encrypted apps fire automatic rifles in broad daylight on Sweden streets. Many will attribute Sweden's unparallel rise in gangline violence to this split into rival factions, but many other gangs rise up during this brutal war.

The gangs form alliances, cooperate on drug shipments, hire each other for hits and sometimes merge while fighting viciously over territory, money, and respect, egging each other on. over Instagram and TikTok. The Shadows versus Death Patrol war is going to create a fundamental shift on Sweden streets. So much so that in 2023, Prime Minister Ulf Christerson

will take to the airwaves and address the nation saying, quote, Sweden has never before seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this. Later adding that Swedish laws aren't designed for gang wars and child soldiers. Says Diamand Salihu,

an investigative journalist and author of a number of books on Sweden's gangs. Quote, We have so many child soldiers that nobody can count anymore. There are kids as young as 13 being arrested. How did one of Europe's safest, most prosperous countries descend into

the real-life version of Grand Theft Auto? This is the underworld podcast. Welcome back to the underworld podcast, the only podcast that is worthy of your precious time every single week where we aim to entertain to inform you by taking you our lovely listeners on a journey

through the world of international organized crime. And who are we? Myself, Danny Gold, and my good mate, Sean Williams, joining us from New Zealand. We are two journalists who have reported on this stuff all over the world. Isn't that right, Sean Williams? It is, yeah.

Just yesterday I went down to the beach, saw a gang of sea goals, Nick a guy's chips straight out of his hands. I mean, that counts, right? There's crime. I think that's what I do nowadays. Could be better. As always, we have bonus episodes

that are usually interviews, occasional crime news rundowns, and other things up at, patreon.com slash underworldpodcast, or you can sign up on Spotify or on iTunes. If you're not signed up, what would it take to get you to sign up? We're trying to figure that out. We're thinking of doing 20-minute bonus episodes for every episode. Is that something that would work? Email us at the underworldpodcast at gmail.com to let us know. Sean has said on record that he is willing to show feet. So if that is something you're interested in, that would work as well,

let us know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the fetish is for looking at a 40-year-old runner's feet, but if it makes me five bucks, I mean, I'm down for way more than if it makes five bucks, but yeah, I should probably end that. Listen, buddy, if you can dream it up, somebody out there is willing to pay $5 a month for it. And your feet fit into that category. What else?

Support our advertisers, underworldpod.com for merch. And away we go. This was a real interesting one. We probably should have done something on this two years ago. And Sean actually did do a prequel way back in 2021. and I had a friend of the pod, incredible researcher and Malmo resident.

Hugo, come on, come on. Is that you say his last name? Am I saying that, right, Sean? Do you know? Come on. Come on. Come on. He wrote me up like a really thorough doc

on a bunch of this stuff in 2023 that I relied on heavily for this episode. But there wasn't a ton of good English language stuff besides the same sort of like news outlet articles and YouTube docs are the sort of gang fluencer YouTube docs that you see. And we wanted to be more thorough. Luckily, D.I.

Lamont Salihu, probably one of the best, if not the best reporter on the gangs in Sweden. He just published an English language book called When Nobody's Listening, which is a fantastic source, and it's one of the ones I also used to make this episode. Okay. Sweden Gang Wars. It's a hot topic, or maybe it was three years ago. But, you know, we like to be thorough here on the Underwall Podcast. I think I remember, like even back then, you know, newfangled YouTuber news doofus who always

wears a beanie going there to investigate the quote-unquote, go zones, but we don't like to dignify those people with acknowledgement. And while I do love a good Malmo, is that, is that it? Malmoo, is that it? Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's called Malmoo because it's got an umla on the O, but like, come on, which guy that doesn't speak Swedish, she's going to call it that, Malmo. Yeah. Anyway, I like a good Malmo as Mogadishu joke or any other war zone, but we're going to take

a bit of a different approach. And to get started, that's right, Sean. We're going to go back. Because you see, in 1397, Sweden joined. the Scandinavian Kalmar. I'm just kidding, we're not, we're not going to start that. We're going to start in like the late 80s, early 90s. That's when Sweden gets its first real taste of gang warfare.

Damn, he lampooned me. It was a simple lampoon. I think I was lampooning. I mean, I do the same thing. I'm lampooning all of us. It's just a joke of the cliche of the genre. Because, anyway, that period, the 80s and the 90s, that's when we have the international biker gangs,

the Hells Angels and the Banditos, looking to expand and get involved in the international drug trade there and other money-making rackets. And that kicks off the great northern biker war or the Nordic Biker War or the Scandinavian Biker War. Whatever you want to call it, we just did a big episode on that maybe six months back. So you don't even have to scroll back more than 20 seconds if you want to find that and brush up on everything. So I'm not going to do a really a deep dive. But what you have to know is they fought, they killed each other, and it was very violent. It's the first real taste of violence like this that the country of Sweden has,

though it seems remarkably tame to what's been happening the last 10 years. Yeah, I feel like at this point we should just tee up each episode with like a bullet point list of when we've done, I know preludes of similar topics, a show number, date, unless it's one of the really old ones, because, yeah, I mean, some of the first ones, no one should listen to those.

In fact, I mean, maybe you should just do 2026 reissues. Like, you know, like we're a lazy record label, saying Nigerian cults, Arcan Redux. That would be pretty good, right? We could, we could do redo them because they weren't on video and they were poorly written and poorly presented with bad sound. So maybe, maybe that's what we do. I was actually in the basement of my friend's house in Berlin, who is a Swedish house DJ and my accountant, which was the most Berlin thing ever. So yeah, I apologize to him for Malmo, but yeah, it was a very different time. We'll see. We'll see. Maybe holiday episodes will do that. So after the Biker Wars are kind of around the same time, we get the emergence of a new group of people. players, and that's the former Yugoslavian mafia groups. Now, in the 70s, Sweden is going through

a bit of a boon, and they invite a host of foreign workers from the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, among other countries, to come through and work low-paying jobs for Swedes, but high-paying for them. But all this bulk in migration comes with a catch. Yugoslavia is a hotbed of crime at the time. And as Misha Glennie says in McMafia, these so-called guest worker communities, they, quote, provided the milieu in which less salubrious, the Yugoslav characters, could take refuge and disappear from police if necessary, which is like the journalistic academic nerd way of saying, you know, some bad apple slipped in, too.

Though, you know, we have an immense amount of respect for Misha Glennie who does real stuff in the field. But, uh, come on, that's like, salubious, like, you know, we're here for the average duo. Sean actually did a pretty thorough episode on this way back in 2021. Like I mentioned, I believe it's actually called Sweden Gang Wars. Think of it as the prequel of this. But yeah, you have some petty,

criminals and low-level mafioso type setting up shop there. And then in the 90s, as Yugoslavia falls apart, you have the emergence, as one often sees during wartime and in places with vacuums of power, sort of new states, all that, of a pretty serious organized crime group or organized crime groups. And as the great Sean Williams writes, quote, add to that these thumped broken nations in the former Yugoslavia, and you've got ready big gangs with lawlessness and easy trafficking routes at home and a network of established, tooled up hoods, ready to go all over. over rich European nations. Yeah, that's pretty well written.

I mean, Michiglennie could take a few notes from now. I wonder why that guy hasn't won an award. I don't know. It's pretty good writing. He should win awards, for sure. He should show feet and he should win awards. Rich European nations that are wide open with lackluster policing and an extremely lenient criminal justice system,

which is still an issue decades later. Look, I'm not saying you need to be like El Salvador, but also maybe murder sentences should carry more weight than like five years in a studio apartment with a PS5. Yeah, but yes, the mafia is forming in the Balkans during this chaotic and in arc of period. They see Sweden as a potential home for doing crimes. So what emerges in Sweden are competitors for the motocucker gangs in the mid-90s, and that is these Balkan organized crime groups who move into drugs and women and gambling,

all the usual, and they have a steady supply of weapons from their former countries to make sure that the rules they set are abided by. And these mafias, along with the bikers, they run the underworld in Sweden in the 90s and in the 2000s. And these are like more sort of organized crime, even though, you know, they're bikers, older, experienced guys who want to make money, less wild street gangs shoot first over Instagram insults.

You get me? Arm robbery has kind of become a thing, too. They're a pretty big moneymaker for them, and there are some wild heists and some real characters. But as we start to enter the 2010s, things are changing in Sweden's crime scene. And this is when we start to see Malmo becoming code for gang violence, or referred to us Sweden, Chicago.

Though in all honesty, as you hear me talk about how crazy the gang violence is there, it really does not compare to say, you know, the gang violence and hop-eds in the states or anywhere close to Latin America, probably even Canada either. It is, though, what we call in the news industry, the stuff in Sweden, it's man bites dog, not dog bites man. Everything is relative. I mean, do I, you think I need to explain that phrase to people know what that means? Yeah, I mean, maybe you should explain it.

And while we're here, let's tell everyone what Nuttgraph is, because I reckon they really want to know that. And while you're on that, you can tell you can tell me why editors spell out these words phonetically, like head deck. Because I actually don't know even know that myself and I'm in the industry. Yeah, okay. Anyway, so Dog Bites Man means that like it's something that that commonly happened. So like, you know, gun violence in New York, like someone, like there's a shooting or someone gets killed, it's going to make the news, but it'll be further down because it's not something that's completely out of

be ordinary, where somewhere like Sweden, it's like man bites a dog. That's like a wild thing that's out of the ordinary. So the same exact thing happening somewhere like New York might not make the news that it would in Sweden, although as we're going to find out, Sweden's got crazier murders, I would say, than even New York has right now. Malmo, for those who don't know, it's a city in Sweden, it's a third largest that develops a pretty bad street gang problem around then and a bad grenade being thrown problem. Not the least of which is because it's the gateway to Denmark, so a border town, which drugs flow through. And at this time, there's new gangs emerging, and they are way more wild, more chaotic, and more violent than ever before, and they're much

younger. And most of the gang members, especially the gang leaders, are either second generation children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. And this is what causes the issue of gang violence in Sweden, not just the murders and end the chaos, to become a really hot-butting controversy, not just in the country, but all over Europe and so much so that eventually it makes its way over to even American news shows and American podcaster, YouTuber, culture war stuff. See, Sweden fancies itself as like a very progressive,

very welcoming country. And it is, to a degree. Around this period and before, like we said, it takes in a lot of refugees and immigrants, asylum seekers, from a lot of war-torn or just difficult countries. Somalia, North Africa, the Middle East, And a lot of these people, they settle in the suburbs of cities like Malmo and Stockholm or even the university city of Uppsala. Yeah, actually, interestingly, for a long time, Syrianska FC.

It's like a top-tier Swedish football team and it was formed straight out of the Syriac community and stuck up with. Syriacs are like Arab Christians, right? I think they're like Arab-Bulfs Christians, but they were formed out of that in the 70s and they actually reached the Premier League in Sweden. So like, it's like a really big, big thing there. And they've fallen on hard times recently. The usual football syndrome tried too much. Ran out of cash. It's a syndrome in Denny in Stockholm.

In Stockholm, a soccer, Stockholm syndrome. That was labored. That was the most labor thing I've done in a while. Yeah, that was awful. We're really striking out here. This is not going to be a big banter episodes. I mentioned this briefly in the cold open, but between 1965 and 1974, Sweden goes on one of these incredibly ambitious.

public housing projects, one of the most, I think, in European history. And the goal is simple. They're going to build one million new apartments to eliminate housing shortages as people flood in from rural areas into cities during Sweden's industrial boom. The apartments are modern, they're affordable, and they're built quickly. I mean, you know the type, this sort of massive concrete housing blocks on the outskirts of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmow, though I definitely think they were a lot nicer than your sort of like Soviet housing blocks you see in Eastern Europe. You know, there's something definitely to be done on the backfiring of well-intentioned housing projects like this.

Some pretty massive gang-related stories here from like this one in Sweden. You've got Cabrini Green in Chicago, Pruitt Igo in St. Louis, the housing projects in like Brownsville and New York, South Bronx. I mean, I'm sure there's a ton more. But it's a pretty interesting phenomenon. But yeah, anyway, these developments, they're popular with working class and middle-class Swedes. They're a great example of your Northern European welfare state successes.

until they're not. Yeah, actually shout out also to Glasgow. The Ice Cream Wars, another past show, that came straight out of these, like, giant, poorly planned housing projects in the UK. And you know who those real crooks are, Danny? Those crooks in architecture. Development and whatever city planning, those crooks and city planning.

It is, I mean, look, they, I don't think these things are started with bad intentions, right? No, no. The road is paved with, uh, with good intentions. The road to hell. Anyway, we are... That's actually delivered way better than it should be. Was that too negative?

Road is paid with good intentions. The Road to Hell. There's an old book I read that was called... What's the Road to Hell? Oh, Michael Marin, about foreign aid in East Africa in the 90s. Great book. The Road to Terror, I think, was called. Fantastic title, too.

I'm sure there's tons of books called The Road to Hell, but that one stuck with me. Anyway, we are going to get to gang warfare in a second to stick with me for a little while longer on this origin. story stuff. By the 1980s and 1990s into the 2000s, Sweden begins accepting large numbers of refugees from conflict zones around the world. Chile is listed there for some reason, but I guess was there conflict in Chile in the 80s and 90s? Yeah, I mean, there's Pinochet, right? Yeah. Right, right, right,

but 70, I thought it was 70, whatever. He was there until the 90s, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Palestine, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the former Yugoslavia. And this is like a point of national pride for the Swedes. They see themselves as this humanitarian superpower. a beacon of tolerance and generosity. And they do love to tell you this, those sanctimonious Scandinavians, as they lecture you about America. But one thing America does right

better than probably any other country in the world during that period. And I will slam by this is integration for immigrants while also providing them the opportunity to work or build a business. And again, obviously, I'm not saying it's easy and it's not perfect, but it is, was far better than most, if not all.

Yeah, Dau, you can play. some patriotic music over the top of that. That was beautiful. It's just, it's just true, dude. Like, we, we, people just get integrated better here, like way better than in Europe. I mean, come on, you know that's the case. I don't know. My cricket team was pretty, pretty good for that. I would say Canada, I think Canada does a fairly good job. Yeah, Canada's great. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. New Zealand. But I think it's better. It's, I think it's easier to, in terms of employment opportunities, like, start a business and make, like, when I walk down my street, you know, there's like 15 people, from 14 different countries with small businesses,

which I think is something that's a lot harder to do in most of Europe. Yeah, yeah, even in Canada, but I don't know. The Swedes, they kind of forget about the integration, or they fail at it, or their new populations don't make a good enough effort. It's probably a combination of all three. Whatever the reasoning is, these populations get isolated somewhat

and have troubles with unemployment, with poverty, with social isolation, or just adapting to a new place. Now, I kind of want to make this clear that, like, this isn't the situation of, you know, like the Paris suburbs, right, where those areas are super deprived, almost walled off, and young people for them cannot get a job anywhere. I think to some degree, the country of Sweden makes some effort to welcome immigrants

to integrate, to provide opportunity, but we can just say that it doesn't go quite as well as they hoped, and there is certainly a culture clash. I guess in Europe the difference is that they're, like, explicitly brought in as guest workers, right? The gas that I abided in Germany. So, I mean, there's not, they're not, like, encouraged to actually make their own businesses and stuff like they might do in the States. But, yeah, I mean, Venezuela and oil politics last week and now this, I mean, we're gently leaning into actual podcasting half a decade down the line.

I don't know. Where could this end? When you say actual podcasting, do you mean, like, the terrible sort of podcast that just kind of like debate whatever hot button issues? The terrible ones that make money that just debate whatever political issues of the day that without understanding it. Yeah, I don't want to lean into that. But I do encourage you guys, let's see if we can juice this algorithm, argue with each other in the comments, you know? Keep it, keep it above board, but let's do some arguing. Let's see what happens.

Maybe Sean will even chime in. Yeah, Ash's chat doesn't really do it for the algorithm on Spotify, I don't think. It's baseball, but so much more. Go bananas for banana ball with ESPN on Disney Plus. The greatest show in sports? Are you kidding me? It's the phenomenon everyone's talking about. The trick play.

Catch the Savannah bananas and other fan favorite teams all season long. With select games streaming with ESPN on Disney Plus. Let's go! US residents, 18 plus only. Select Banana Ball games available to all Disney Plus subscribers. Terms apply. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing.

They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murphers. Hi, I'm Karina B. B. Differ, and every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling true crime story connected to that exact day in history, from killer cannibal brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult, and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that

make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand-new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Anyway, so back to where we were. What I was saying, yeah.

So for sure, isolated, marginalized questions of identity. Definitely don't have the same advantage as Swedes do, but most immigrants don't in most countries. And as we've covered before throughout the history of America, going back to the Irish and the Italian and the Jews at the turn of the century, organized crime, gangs emerging from this sort of phenomenon. It's nothing new and it's somewhat universal. So I actually asked Hugo this, or he wrote about it in the document he sent me a couple years ago. He is like an incredible open source researcher and analyst focused on vehicle-borne IEDs who also spent years in Malmo. I think he still lives there or he grew up there.

even sure. But he's periodically clued me in on Sweden's gang scene and actually wrote us that huge packet, pack document a couple years ago that I keep mentioning. Yeah, it's great. And he said, quote, Sweden is among the least racist countries in the entire world. And using the racism card is simply an expression of a detrimental victim mentality whereby immigrant kids are told they don't have any chance and thus give up before trying to make something of themselves. When everything is the fault of the racist structures of the state and society, the individual is automatically absolved. of responsibility for their own actions. Coupled with the detrimental gangster culture

whose popularity has skyrocketed in the past decade, this provides a clear path into the ranks of the gangs, because what else are they going to do when everyone has told them they don't have a chance at a normal life? Sweden on average spends far more on immigrant-dominated neighborhoods

in terms of educational facilities, health care availability, etc., than on neighborhoods with majority Swedish populations, something that negates the claim that the state neglects these areas. Routing the choice that turned to gang crime in poverty also ignores the fact that gang criminals represent a tiny minority of the people living in these areas. The overwhelming majority, despite their relative poverty, go about their lives

without feeling the need to turn to crime. There are also so many success stories that discredit the connection between socioeconomic factors and criminality. Adding to that, something Diamant Salehu writes in the beginning of his book, quote, I stress the point that the criminals I speak to don't usually blame society or their parents. rather they tend to insist that they actively chose their lifestyle which you know i've mentioned this before but like the cool factor right it's a real thing it does not get included enough in discussion about why young people join gangs especially in the age of social media right the truth is it is it's cool they get girls from it they get money from it they get friends and they become

popular like it's a real thing that that attracts kids to gangs yeah that's why i join journalism Which actually is a self-effacing joke because it's not true, but it actually is why journalism in many ways. Yeah, you were just misled. Whoops. Yeah. Whatever the case in these neighborhoods in Sweden, things are not going well. And the first inkling of that really starts to happen around this period, 2010. The gang violence ratchets up enough that international media starts picking up on it.

Writes the New York Times in 2011 about one such neighborhood, Rosengard, quote, Rosengarde hardly has the look of a troubled ghetto. Lawns and playgrounds abound, but the area does not look like traditional Sweden either. Satellite dishes hang from every balcony. The bakery sells Middle Eastern confections. Al-Dazira plays on the televisions, and young men huddle on street corners casually bragging about doing battle with the police. And it continues, quote, a few years ago, the fire and ambulance brigades would not even enter Rosengarde without a police escort. Use there through rocks and set cars on fire.

police officials say things are much better now. Fires were down 40% last year compared with 2009. But last month, two police vehicles parked at the station were set on fire with small homemade explosives. There's a real uptick in the violence. In 2011, a gang leader is shot dead, and by 2013, Reuters is calling Malmo, quote, Sweden, Chicago. Since that first gang leader has dropped another eight go in a year, and again, Sweden's got a really, really low homicide rate, especially when it comes to shootings. And now, overhauled. Over 80% of them are gang-related. So this violence starts to ramp up around that time,

and Sweden also goes through these successive waves of unrest during these years. Pretty sure I just took this out of your episode, John. This is your writing, which you can tell. It's terrific. In 2013, cops shoot a 69-year-old man dead in the Stockholm suburb of Husby. So rioters set a Stockholm police station on fire, and folks in Malmo burn up two squad cars. Cops are starting to warn about a gun problem even back then, too.

says a deputy commissioner quote We believe it's linked to the prevalence of weapons It is big Yeah it's nice to be plagiarized in a way that might Actually make me a couple of quid For a change instead of the usual Insider slash fire story Anyway, yeah I mean is it

Is this down to the fact that there's all these weapons Caches left over by the former Yugoslavia migrants Is that where the guns are coming from or is it something else Well I don't think they're left in Sweden You mean their cachets left in Sweden they were coming from the cashes left in like the former Yugoslavia. Yeah. Well, I don't know.

Kind of both really. Like, I would assume they brought some or, yeah, I don't know. I think there was data that showed that they're actively being smuggled in. And a lot of them are coming from Serbia, which I think makes that rifle, what's it called, the Serbian rifle that's supposed to be. Wait, I'm going to say Makaroff, but that's not. It's a pistol, isn't it? No.

I think I talk about it later down, but I also think, you know, getting like AK knockoffs are not, is not hard. There must be a lot of guns for swing. knockoffs right in Serbia I can imagine I'm sure I'm sure use love yeah and it's a lot of guns for Sweden

right but I don't think it's a lot of guns and it's also a country of 10 million people so how many guns do you really need to like heat things up it's probably I don't know what in thousands 2000 yeah yeah I just a guess but obviously it's a huge difference right especially when people are willing to to shoot and I think a lot of these gangs are similar to like low-rank gangs in the states where they have

a couple weapons and they trade them around you know yeah yeah okay so this is this is a gigantic change for the country. Sweden's supposed to be a place of safety, of prosperity, social and racial harmony, the kind of place you can leave your doors unlocked and whole families go for bike rides together through the city, violent crime, murders, gangs. I mean, sure you had the bikers and you had a little bit of those bank robberies,

but that stuff is supposed to happen elsewhere, not in Sweden. And even with the previous iterations of Swedish gang warfare, the bikers and the hugo mobs, the country has never seen anything like it's starting to see with the gang warfare that is now threatening to take over the city streets. And nothing really brings us home, like the war that erupts in 2015 between death patrol and Shadas, Shadas with a Z. Both gangs are started by teenagers of Somali descent, childhood friends in the Stockholm suburbs of Rinkaby and Tenseda.

And that's where we get the cold open, where I went into it a bit, and Rinkaby is part of that million housing plan. According to 2011 data, residents in Rinkaby come from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Turkey, Finland, Ethiopia, Eritrea, former Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland, Chile, Syria, China, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Morocco, and Lebanon. Boom, boom, boom. 60 different ethnic groups speaking 40 different languages. So it's like Queen, it's like a neighbor in Queens. It's actually somewhat of a success story, too. I mean, it has public libraries, green gardens with playgrounds, clean roads, good schools, and public transport, artists and musicians and families that thrive. I actually think, God, where was that base? Did you watch Snabakash on a, uh, On Netflix?

No. No. No. Oh, great. Good. I think it might be based more on Fox truck. Yeah, great. Great, like, Swedish crime show about, like, the gangs in these housing projects.

But definitely, definitely recommend it. I mean, the neighborhoods have, the names are too nice sounding to have anything going on. Rinkabee, Husby. I think they actually are. I mean, these aren't neighborhoods from what I understand. They don't look like favelas or, like, projects in the U.S. No, they still do look. Mid-century kind of big projects.

Like, nothing bad. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, success stories, but of course there's the other side. High unemployment for young men, poor school scores compared to the rest of Sweden, kids growing up feeling disconnected from mainstream Swedish society, or having these identity issues. And of course, the allure of the street life. Here's how the website fairplanet.org describes Rinkabee in an article titled Somali Mothers Fighting Streetkeme in Sweden. I think this is from 2015 or 2016.

Rinkabee is one of the residential areas that embodies the runaway crime and is seen, as a reflection of Sweden's failed immigration policies. Christened the little Mogadishu. Due to the large Somali population, the predominantly immigrant town with a population of about 19,000 people and where 9 out of 10 people are non-Swedish has never known peace. Drugs are trafficked openly, police cars are torched, and bombs go off randomly.

Teenagers as young as 15 carry guns and wear body armor. Interestingly, the suburb hasn't had a police station since 2014, although the government has announced plans to set one up in 2019. And that's from a progressive human rights NGO based in Berlin, just to add that in. It does sound quite a lot like Mogadishy's really fair. I think it's, like I said, it's a man bites dog situation, right? Compared to what it was. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the lore of the street, and that's sort of how that crew from our cold open get started, petty drug dealers and thieves, pushing dimes on the corners and whatnot, but they want more. So first they start off robbing the jewelry store, the smashing grab in the mall. and then on the morning of July 22nd, 2015, they hit the foreign exchange. The robbery is successful, but the partnership goes sideways, and so begins the infamous gang war that pretty much births both these notorious gangs.

The friend groups, the relatives, they fracture and they take sides. On the one side, Shadas, and on the other side, Death Patrol, which also goes by three MST. These are loose gangs full of teenagers without a strong hierarchy, but they're vicious. They have no issues killing each other. In fact, Death Patrol eventually becomes known for contract killings, charging tens of thousands of dollars a hit, and that's when become a big issue in Sweden, especially when encrypted apps hit the scene around 2017, and people can get hired anonymously. More on that later, because that gets really crazy. The next few years, 2015, 2016, 2017, there's tit-for-tat attacks, bombing, shootings, all that, and it's not even the only gang war going on in Sweden. Then in the winter of 2017 into 2018, things get brutal.

Now, I don't know if this is the first example of this, but it's one that's often pointed to as like the exclamation point for when this tactic takes off. In January of 2018, a Death Patrol hitman walks into a pizzeria in broad daylight in Rinkabee and executes a shot as member, shooting him in the head point blank. Yeah, that is an insane step up. It's coming back to me now, like the 2021 show that I did as well. I think I led with a, there's like a crazy killing in a barbershop in broad daylight. I think like hail of bullets, 2 p.m., like tons of people around.

It's like insane stuff out of nowhere, the kind of violence, yeah. Yeah, but here's the thing that sets the tone for the next decade or so of gangland assassinations in Sweden. The shooter is 16 years old. He's soon caught, but because of Sweden's super lenient criminal justice system, especially when it comes to people under 18, he's given only. three years. And those three years are to be served in a youth facility. And this, this whole, this whole thing, it's a calculated thing by death patrol. They are aware of how low the penalties are for teenagers in Sweden, even for murder. See, in Sweden, murder suspects under 15 cannot be

arrested by police. Social services handle them. And if they're between 15 and 18, they cannot be sentenced to adult prison. Instead, the harshest sentence they can expect is three years of youth confinement, where they're allowed phones, computers, and other luxuries, for shooting and killing another person, regardless of how brutal the act is. Yeah, this does seem like saying gang leaders could maybe exploit for nefarious means, but I don't want to give away any spoilers.

Yeah, yeah. In fact, murder charges in general only carried between 14 and 18 years of prison, which ends up being 9 to 12 years behind bars with early release on good behavior. And you may have heard about some shooters getting life imprisonment, but that only means that you're not eligible for parole

until after 10 years served. In fact, there's a case where a 17-year-old killed the cop. I think that was in 2021, and he only got eight years. And that was an extraordinary case where anything below, the already extremely lax sentence, would have been viewed as even more of a slap in the face to police. Now, add into this that cops in Sweden are particularly understaffed, they get pretty low pay,

and they're really hamstrung in terms of surveillance and monitoring even known gangsters because of super strict privacy laws in Sweden that make it extremely hard to take down these gangs. There's no RICO laws here whatsoever. That's super interesting. I'd have assumed also that base pay for a public worker in Sweden was like a hundred grand or something. I didn't even know they were underpaid people in Scandinavia. That's interesting. I think I looked it up and cops averaged like five grand a month. Oh, geez. But I could be not a cheap country. Stockholm's expensive too, right?

Yeah, it's insanely expensive, yeah. More so than New York? No. Yeah, you learned a lesson last week. Keep on enjoying. Yeah, I did. Especially at those clubs we were going to. Well, no comment, but there are ways to spend your money that are better. Yeah, yeah. All right.

Also, one thing left out of a lot of convos around 2011, Sweden's Supreme Court changes some rules when it comes to prosecuting drug trafficking and dealing, which makes sentencing possibly way more lenient. judges are given a bit more wiggle room to consider extenuating circumstances like first-time offenders, young people or those in minor roles. That means more people caught are getting fines, probation, or community sentences instead of prison. It gives lower-level gang members a chance to avoid jail,

lessens their punishments, and provides a crack in the system or an opportunity for the street networks and gangs to survive and grow and exploit. Now, all this has been widely debated in Sweden right now, I think the past two or three or four years even at this moment in 2025. But this was certainly the case back then for sure. I don't think it's really changed, though there's a lot of debates about moving the age, I think the 15 thing to 13. So I think there's a lot of that going on, but we'll get to that next episode when I catch us up.

And the gangs, they're not idiots, right? They figure all this out. So what they do is they start hiring and sending teenagers to do their hits. We're talking 13, 14, 15, 16-year-olds becoming Sweden's gangland cigar. And that's what Salihu means when he talks about an epidemic of child soldiers that I mentioned earlier. So Death Patrol and Shadas, they release a wave of these child hitmen for bombings, shootings, hits, all that. Do we go into the bombings already? I think, you know what, I'll get to that.

I'll get to that later on too. Sorry, I'm pushing a lot back. There's just a lot to cover here. And we have two episodes to get through it. Yeah, interesting sidebars where like both sort of six out of ten gang names, nothing special could try harder. But I guess when you're in Sweden, I mean, their most favorite famous band ever is just the first letters of the people's names, right? So the bar's pretty low. Are there any other Swedish bands like the hives, not great name, the Cardigans average?

I mean, I'm showing my age here. Are there any like up-to-date Swedish bands that you've heard of? I was Cardigans the one who did love for? Yes. Great song. In what, the late 90s? Yeah, it was in the Romeo and Juliet movie. Bas Lerm is an incredible movie.

Fantastic song. I had something about Sweden gangs to say. Oh, actually, I think Death Patrol is a pretty solid name. But I think Shotaz with the Z at the end is like a, I mean, come on, buddy. Yeah, that's, that's juvenile, man. That's what that is. Over the next few years, there's close to a dozen murders. Back to the murders.

Over the next few years, there's close to a dozen murders committed in the war between Shadas and Death Patrol. Swedish police eventually identify four leaders of Death Patrol in 2019. They're all eventually caught and given long sentences, but the war is continue. In 2020, it even spreads to Denmark when five members of Death Patrol, which are basically a hit squad, including two under 18, travel to Copenhagen to take out two members of Shadas who had fled there for their safety. They commit a double murder. They take the two out, which royally pisses off the Danes. And this is a big thing now, too. We'll get to the more international

angle when we dive into the war between the Kurdish Fox and Strawberry next episode, and the internal fox trout war. But in Scandinavia, the other countries like Denmark, Finland, starting to get super pissed off at Sweden for its lax enforcement and inability to curb the gang wars that start spreading to their neighbors and sort of Sweden's homegrown gangs are expanding their territory into countries like Finland and Denmark. Yeah, it might be worth pointing out now that if you don't know, Malmo, Malou, whatever, and Copenhagen, they're basically like twin cities, right? They're separated by eight miles of sea and a bridge in the middle, hence to show the bridge,

which was really good um was i didn't see they're almost the same place they redid it for warres in el paso i think in the states yeah yeah right the central pot there's like a murder and the body's found on the bridge i never watched the states one though or maybe i tried to and i didn't love it i didn't watch it but i've heard good stuff about it actually but it's yeah they're like i don't mean the swedish dene denmark one is good yeah it's it's pretty good but there's like um i don't know we would talk about that jurisdictional thing between like what alabama and mississippi or whatever it was a few weeks ago i mean how is Does it work with these?

Tennessee. These guys in. Well, that's why they made a show about it. Correct. I think the, no, the Danes, if the Danes catch them in their territories, it's Danish justice, which, you know, they do catch them. And Denmark actually has learned its lesson from the Biker Wars of the 80s and 90s. So their criminal justice system does not play around.

They're not as lenient. The Danish court determined that the double murder is part of that gang conflict between death patrol and shot us, which means they can use special gang legislation for the trial. So the five, they get heavy sentences, including, life imprisonment for some, which I believe is a bit more serious in Denmark than in Sweden. The Danes also ratchet up their border patrol for the first time in a long time on that bridge, trying to keep the Swedish gang wars from further spilling over. One of the people identified as the leader of Death Patrol who was caught in this is named

Muhammad Ali, who goes by McAlelli? Who is that Sean? He's a soccer player, right? Yeah, Claude McAlelele. He defined the position I now play in, which is defensive in field. play for Chelsea, Real Madrid, he was incredible, and apparently incredible in the showers as well. But, yeah, this guy, I looked him up. He doesn't look like Macaulet at all.

He's like someone stretched him out and vacuum-backed him, so I don't know. Not very good. Anyway, that guy makes headlines a few years ago when he tries to renounce his Swedish citizenship and get the Dange to deport him to Somalia instead of Sweden, but they do not go for it. And I doubt Somali prisons have PS5s or whatever they get in Sweden, but they probably are lot easier to bribe your way out of. I mean, I've actually been inside a Somali prison. I think I'd take my chances with the Swedes, to be honest. Maybe, I mean, I assume he was fearing there's an attacks on him or something like that. But, okay, besides all the murdering, though,

these gangs, they make their money from drugs and the market for drugs is explode in Sweden and the region in recent years. Sweden's got a great location to pump into the rest of Scandinavia, a relatively wealthy population, and, like I said, lacks enforcement on drug dealing, uh, making get a pretty attractive market and they like to party. And these gangs now have connections to get a pure larger supply, whether it's in the Balkans, Netherlands are big, Morocco, Spain. You know, there's big money to be made here. Now, around the time that that trial is playing out in Denmark in 2020, 2021, there's yet another murder that absolutely shocks Sweden. And the reason to shock Sweden is not just because it's another 19-year-old gun down, but because the teenager who was murdered

is one of the country's biggest music stars, a rapper named Aynar, Aynar, Aynar, who had set streaming records for Sweden and won awards. He was, essentially, the biggest rap star in Sweden at the time of his murder. So Swedish gangsters are rap, you know, becomes a thing in the 2010s, and much like you find in recent years

with the drill scene in Chicago, in the Bronx, and Brooklyn, many of these rappers are either tiding with gangs or gang members themselves. I actually thought all the Swedish rappers were going to be like drill rappers themselves or Joe guys, but I listened to a few of their songs, and they kind of mostly sound like Drake and Juice World knockoffs, but some of it, some of it is catchy.

I'm not going to lie. The songs and the Instagram accounts, you know, they become fodder for the gang gossip blogs. You know, they're used for recruitment, they're calling on enemies, they're starting beef. It's a familiar pattern except with Sweden I kind of feel like maybe there's a level of ineptitude

with the police where you don't see that in Chicago or New York, like they're on it. That's my personal opinion. But I think it bears out. Says Hugo, quote, The fact is that the majority of notable gangster rappers in Sweden are connected to a gang in some way or another, often functioning as propaganda arm of,

as a propaganda arm of their respective gang. Yeah, this is like, wasn't this similar to the kind of thing you were talking about in Marseilles as well, right? It was like all LinkedIn, gangs, music. There's a lot of that mixing going on, slinging. I think they're actually members that were. It's like, you know, back in the day in like, in New York and LA, I feel like in 80s and 90s,

the gangster rappers were not so much gangsters themselves, but like getting a conversation. storied by gangsters. Yeah. That was like a big thing, but in Sweden, it sounds like they're actually, I mean, they're also just little kids running around with guns, but you get it. So yeah, you get the social media pages and the message boards to, you know, they treat these gang members like celebrities, a gang wars like sports teams, and they even start using

the term gang fluencer in Sweden around 2021. I think it becomes like a something with like the Swedish language association, whatever you want to call it. So, Aynar, this guy, he grows up in Stockholm. I've seen some stuff say he grew up in like a night. area. Others say he was in trouble as a young guy and lived in a Swedish group home or the Swedish version of a group home. But he is involved someone in street life or just kind of cultivates that image. He pals around with some other prominent gangster rappers in Sweden,

like a guy named Yassin Bin, who by all accounts is heavily involved with Shadas. By 2019, after like a year or two of being active, he's 16 years old and arguably the biggest pop star in Sweden. He releases his debut album, Forsta Class, and it's a massive success. His single cotton-eye trochton tops the Swedish charts in 2019 and he becomes Sweden's most streamed artists on Spotify that year more than Abba, more than the cardigans. More than the hives. In 2020, he was, is Swedish House Mafia actually?

They're not Swedish, right? I think they are. I think they are, right? Maybe. I thought they were like, I know such a guys from the one island. They were good. They were Swedish, actually, which means fight club in Swedish. Anyway, I know.

Number one, 2019. In 2020, He wins Newcomer of the Year and Hip Hop Act of the Year at Sweden's versions of the Grammys. So this kid, he is a star. Yeah, I looked up what Katten Etracton means. And apparently it's like neighborhood cat or like a household cat or something. I mean, he's rapping in Swedish, right? He's not in English.

So, you know, integration, pretty good. It's catchy. No, but he's Swedish. He's like a Swedish, Swedish kid. Like, he's not the kid of immigrants. He's like a Sweden, Swedish. Oh, he's like a white Swedish kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, he falls into some traps because in May of 2020, when he's only 17 years old, he's kidnapped. One of the prominent gangs, the VARBY Network, that's the thing that gangs in Sweden go are called networks a lot. They want to kidnap him outside of a studio, but they fail. But two weeks later, they succeed. Einar is actually set up by two prominent rapper buddies,

Yassin, who he mentioned earlier, and another famous gangster rapper named Haval Khalil. They tell him to come to the studio to do a collab, and then he's just grabbed up. They take him somewhere, they rob him of his jewelry, they beat him, and they make him dress up in women's underwear where they take a video of it to use as blackmail, threatening to expose him and destroy his street cred unless he pays them $300,000. He's held for hours.

He refuses to pay the extortion fee. I think that actually happens to after he's let go, the extortion attempt. They also plant a bomb outside his house and he still refuses to pay. Yeah, I mean, in Berlin, this is considered full play. You pay for this. You mean putting, having, being someone and making them wear women's underwear? Yeah, yeah, but yeah, stuff as well. I don't know.

All of it. So, you know, there's multiple reports that say who did this. Some say it's the Dallin Network, which plays a central role in next week's episode. They were involved in the kidnapping. The ganglating stuff in Sweden, it seems like relatively loose, like I keep mentioning. Like a lot of these guys seem to move around different gangs, work together, fight each other, shift, break alliances, all that. The kidnapping of Ainar, it does start a lot of. cycle of distracts and threats between him and his enemies. It's all over YouTube. It's all over

Instagram. You know the drill. In April the following year, Haval, that other rapper, his brother is shot and killed in what some people believe is retaliation for the kidnapping. Soon after, both Yassin and Havall are sentenced to prison for their involvement in the kidnapping. Yassin gets, I think, a few months, and Havall Khalil gets two and a half years. Hainar, though, around this time, I think it's 2021. He's still being targeted, right? In more incidents, their shootings near him, threats against him and his family, his mother speaks out publicly about how she fears he's going to get killed, his friends are telling him he should leave Sweden or at least disappear for a while. The Swedish police later reveal they had intelligence suggesting

that there was an active plot to harm him, involving multiple individuals across different criminal networks. So like I said, a bunch of different gangs. But Swedish law enforcement, again, operating in a country where they have these strong privacy protections and limited surveillance capabilities compared to other countries struggle to prevent what's obviously coming. In early October 2021, he's arrested after being involved in stabbing, and the week after that, he's scheduled to testify in an appeal hearing about his own kidnapping. He's actually refused to testify at the initial trial. He was very public about not wanting to participate in the appeal either, but he never actually

makes it to court because on October 21st, 2021, he shot and killed in an upscale Stockholm neighborhood, instantly becoming one of Sweden's most notorious notorious murders. It's clear from the start he was tracked and targeted and most speculation points to the Shottos. Quote, we heard pom-pom-pom, said dumbly, a rapper who was with him who was also a convicted rapist

and member of the Street Gang Death Patrol and later I believe might have been suspected of being involved in setting up Aynar. This is like completely off top. Well, it's not completely off-top of you. There's that pom-pon-pon thing is interesting how different languages

say stuff for different sounds. Like, did you know that in Germany they think a chicken says kiki-dikidiki instead of like cockadoodle do? I can't remember what they say for a dog's woof, but it's not it's not woof either. It's like completely different. Everyone in the last few episodes who was like, we really like the banter. The banter is going to just be like, actually we changed our mind after this episode. Oh, wow, wow. That's what they say.

Wow, wow. That's what that's a dog saying. People are in here for that. I don't even know what that is as a subject, but yeah, I hope you enjoy our show. According to Diomond, according to Diomans Salihu, quote, several rappers connected different criminal gangs of support from their respective gang,

since they oftentimes have grown up together with the gang members. Einar moved between multiple different groupings and didn't have the same support, which made him more vulnerable. But even with Einar Dad and the other rappers locked up, this feud continues to play out, especially since the gangs all fractured into smaller groups. A gang member who has with INAR at the time was murder and like I said, is suspected of leaking his location to the killers for a cut,

was himself shot and killed outside his mother's apartment on Christmas Day, 2022. The suspected shooter also had an IED detonated at the entrance to the apartment complex where he's listed. Yeah, so we're kind of moving from, what, gang fight into urban warfare? IEDs. Yeah, the IED thing is interesting, right? It's another interesting facet of the Swedish underworld. They love to blow things up. homemade IEDs, stolen dynamite,

copious amounts of grenades brought from the Balkans. It's like a daily part of life in some neighborhoods now. In 2024, there's 317 bombings in Sweden, one a day pretty much. Sweden now has more grenade attacks per capita than any country in Europe not actively at war. And I think, in fact, according to Swedish criminologists, the only other country that even tracks hand grenade explosions

like Sweden does is Mexico. And you guys know how that goes. There's even like if you see something say something campaign there. According to Hugo, most of the bombings take place in the cities and they're usually set off at night and they're usually not intended to kill someone, right? They're used for intimidation and

coercion, usually to let a target know that they can be gotted. That's why so many occur at these, the main entrances of apartment complexes where gang members live. They also target the homes of family members, of gang members or businesses and people that are being extorted, which is another way the gangs make money

and they're starting to do that a lot more. They're moving into the old school mafia stuff. Extortion rackets, right? Going after small businesses or restaurants, nightclubs that are owned by rival gang members, but a lot of like barbershops, car washes, gyms, arcades, the sort of kiosks they have in Europe. They'll get this demand for protection money. My assumption, too, is that a lot of them are immigrant-owned because, they're probably from the same community because that's just how, how it works with organized crime, right? So they'll turn down the protection money at first, they get bombed. Just the classic mafia tactics. And the guns, though, too, there are

a lot of them for Europe. In January 2021, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime released a report that claims most of the guns come from Serbian guns that traffic through family outfits and biker gangs. Most of them come across the bitch from Copenhagen, hand grenade sell for just $12, and a third of all illegal handguns on Swedish streets are Serbian Zastravas. How do you say it, John? Yeah, perfect. I don't know. Serbo-Crow, it's not my forte. But I mean, And that $12 thing is nuts for a grenade. I mean, I read some bad sources online, and apparently it cost between 50 and 100 to get a a fragnade on the black market in the U.S., which...

There's no way that's true. I don't know. It's probably like 20 times that much. You reckon? You're not getting a grenade for... Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I'm not getting a grenade for cheap here. Continue to use an OCCR. A waste of money. God. I mean, I assume I've never had to purchase a grenade, but I assume I don't think I know who has on the black market. Guns, yes, but not, not, not, um, so I assume the prices are quite high. Continues in OCCRP story, quote,

groups receiving arms from these traffickers include Swedish biker gangs and family-based drug syndicates. Others include youth gangs among Sweden's Somali diaspora, as well as a notorious group of loan sharks that has exploited its own community of Orthodox Christian immigrants from the Middle East for decades. That might be your, uh, your Syriacs right there, but I'm not sure. Yeah, sounds right. I don't want to rush the judgment.

But back, back to the violence. Einar isn't the only prominent Swedish rapper to be gunned down. In 2024, another successful rapper named C Gambino was shot dead in a parking garage, weeks after waiting a prestigious Grammy Award. That's the Swedish Grammy Award. Yeah, that's a pretty harsh sentence for plagiarism. Childish Gambino is a Swedish gangster? What the hell?

I think he just, but she gambit, who knows? Another rapper, Gaboro, I think he was Syrian. He was gunned down in a parking lot as well later that year. and it was all over social media. In 2023, a teenage rapper named Aduli was gunned down at a sports pitch while children were training nearby. And in 2019, rapper Rose Shamal was murdered

while walking his dog. His brother had been killed the year before. But yeah, back to Death Patrol and the Shadas. Death patrol fractures, but an element of it continues to this day. Their operations aren't limited to Sweden. The gang is expanded into Finland, Denmark, and Morocco, smug and cocaine and hashish from Spain and Morocco into the Nordic region.

Finnish authorities broke up a major death patrol drug operation in 2023, seizing over 350 kilos of drugs and 250,000 euros in cash. So 350 kilos is not a small amount. The investigation revealed that the gang was systematically bringing drugs through Sweden into Finland where they would be sold to street gangs in major cities. And these gangs, too, the reason they're so impactful is they kind of serve as the inspiration for other young men and teens in Sweden hoping to live that life, right? It really is like a social contagion, this sort of stuff.

Always has been when, like I said, but when you factor in social media too, you have a lot of other gangs sort of springing up, right? The Bro network, the Dahlin network, the Norseburg network, Tense the network, Husby Network, 24K, and as we're going to hear, Fox Trot, and then the Roomba Network. They all fight over territory. They recruit teenagers. They send out hits while trying to make cash from the drug game. by the 2020s, cops in Sweden estimate there's 200 so gangs like them in Sweden and 62,000 people connected to life

or involved in some capacity, which is out of a population of 10.6 million in the entire country. That's nuts, man. I mean, I guess you've kind of like gone over this a little bit, but the keys and the fact they're shipping to Finland, right? That there's such a market for these guys. Like Malmo is right next to Copenhagen,

which is right near northern Germany. You've got Hamburg, the port there, Bremerhaven. And then it's a transshipment point from the Netherlands and Germany to Scandinavia. I guess my only question is why the Danes haven't been so successful on that, then why it's left to the Swedes. But I guess, I don't know, better policing maybe. The sort of experience of the Biker Wars has made them crack down a lot harder over there. I think they've cracked down hard for sure on homegrown gangs there.

And I think that it's easier for the Swedes because they can go in and out. But they definitely, I don't know. if they actually control the drug trade in Copenhagen. I know they've tried to expand, but like we said, they got caught. Denmark also has its own viker gang situation there too as well. And I'm sure some of these gangs, too, you know?

Probably their own iteration. So the gang that really takes Sweden's underworld to the next level that shocks the country even more and changes everything and actually stretches across the world, Turkey, Iraq, Dubai, and even gets involved with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and gets sanctioned

by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. And that gang is Fox Trot and led by the Kurdish Fox and is second in command and now deadly rival Strawberry. And that story is going to be told in the next episode because we are out of time. Wow. It gets crazy. It gets so much crazier. But yeah, patreon.com, that's anoreworld podcast.

Bonus episodes. Everything else you want there. Underworldpod.com for merch. The inaugural podcast at gmail. com let us know what you guys want to see and hear and how we can convince you to give us more money that's maybe pithy outros yeah this this fucking guy