Swedish police have claimed that their country has become a major international transit hub for illegal drugs, with large amounts of drugs smuggled in and distributed across Scandinavia and beyond.
Ted Esplund of the National Operations Department’s Intelligence Unit of the Swedish police has claimed that the country has become a major hub for drug trafficking in the Scandinavian region but also noted drugs were being shipped from Sweden to other countries, such as the United States and even Australia.
“There’s a structured organization and structure for that within the criminal networks,” Esplubnd told Swedish broadcaster SVT.
Esplund also indicated that women were becoming more and more involved in drug trafficking in Sweden, stating that police have been able to see their roles in networks after hacking encrypted messaging apps used by criminals.
The sale of drugs is one of the major sources of revenue for Sweden’s criminal gangs, and conflict over drugs and other issues have fueled Sweden’s surge of fatal shootings in recent years.
Ayub, a former drug courier, told SVT that he had transported drugs across the country and had delivered drugs to those waiting at the border of neighbouring countries as well.
He claimed that he had become a drug courier during the early part of the Wuhan virus pandemic after the had lost his job. Since leaving the gang, Ayub claims to have been targeted for murder twice and that a relative of his abroad was shot.
Many of those in criminal gangs in Sweden are either migrants or come from migration backgrounds, a fact that was only acknowledged very recently by Swedish police and the political establishment.
Earlier this year Sweden’s National Police Chief, Anders Thornberg, commented on the issue of fatal shootings and bombings saying: “It is based on a number of different factors. A sharp increase in demand for drugs, accelerating technological development and digitalisation, increased migration, and lack of integration.”
The year prior, Police Commissioner Erik Nord of the Greater Gothenburg region also admitted a link between migration and gang crime, saying: “It is no longer a secret today that much of the problem of gang and network crime with the shootings and explosions have been linked to migration to Sweden in recent decades.”
“When, like me, you have the opportunity to follow matters at the individual level, you see that virtually everyone who shoots or is shot in gang conflicts originates from the Balkans, the Middle East, North or East Africa,” he confessed.
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