A 13-year-old boy has been apprehended by Swedish police after a shooting by Israeli company Elbit Systems’ building in Gothenburg. While nobody was injured in the shooting, the suspected shooter is facing charges of attempted murder and aggravated weapons offenses. Police said the boy was not from the area but appeared to have traveled there for the purpose of committing a crime.
Elbit Systems, a defense technology contractor, has been the target of protests and attempted sabotage before. In December, the company was targeted by protesters spray painting slogans on the building and in June, a live explosive device was found outside the company’s office. The company has also been the focus of protests in Gothenburg city center, and its UK headquarters was targeted by violent anti-Israel protesters in August.
While it’s unknown whether the actual perpetrators of the latest attacks on Israeli targets in Sweden and Denmark have ideological motives, Swedish security services Säpo have reason to believe the people at the top do.
Earlier this year, Israeli intelligence services Mossad warned that Iran had contracted with criminal networks in Europe to commit terror attacks. Säpo has also verified that the Iranian regime uses organized crime for violent attacks, including the two most recent ones. According to information provided to Swedish state television SVT, rival gang leaders Rawa Majid, known as ‘the Kurdish Fox,’ and Ismail Abdo, who goes by ‘the Strawberry,’ are both ordering bombings or shootings on behalf of the Iranian government.
SVT’s sources inside one of the criminal networks say that targets are “anything connected to Israel—synagogues, embassies, diplomats,” and buildings as well as individuals.
Sven Granath, a criminologist at Stockholm University and an expert on youth criminality, said the latest attack is likely another example of criminal networks using children—what the Danish justice minister called “child soldiers”—to commit serious violent crimes. A disturbing reason for why the country is seeing ever-younger violent criminals, Granath told GöteborgsPosten, could be that these types of ‘contract crimes’ no longer have a high status in criminal circles:
The status of performing deeds has become lower. When a person has taken what can be called a gig that has gone well, the person may want to climb a notch in the chain and instead become a point of contact or project manager themselves. Then new executors are needed
Sweden has been a hotbed of support for the Palestinian cause long before the country acquired a large Muslim population through migration. Palestinagrupperna (The Palestine Groups), a PLO-supporting NGO, was formed as early as 1976 by several existing pro-Palestinian groups banding together.
Since the Hamas massacre of over 1,700 people in Israel on October 7th last year, anti-Israel sentiments have been rampant in major Swedish cities. Weekly demonstrations in Malmö were found to include calls in Arabic for the destruction of Tel Aviv, and threats and protests against the Israeli contestant in the Eurovision Song Contest prompted increased security.
On the anniversary of the Hamas attack, the Swedish Left Party (who removed “Communist” from their name in 1990) arranged a demonstration in central Gothenburg to “show their support for the Palestinians.” The manifestation reportedly included setting off fireworks to celebrate “A Happy October 7th.”
