Swedish police vans in Stockholm (Photo: Peter Isotalo)
Ninos Afram, a Syriac Christian man, was shot dead on April 2, 2026, after gunfire targeted his vehicle in the Grusåsen area of Södertälje, Sweden.
He was transported to hospital in critical condition and died at 1:00 p.m. Afram was the son of Syriac activist Dr. Abrohom Afram. No suspects have been arrested, and police are reviewing surveillance footage. Current reporting suggests the motive was crime-related rather than religious.
Södertälje is one of Sweden’s most troubled cities. One-third of its population is of Syriac descent, and more than half has a foreign background.
Swedish police named Södertälje a focus of concern in their 2025 organized crime report, noting that young people from immigrant backgrounds have become part of the gang violence problem.
As many people were shot dead in Södertälje in one year as in all of London. Criminal networks have been advancing into local politics there as far back as 2011.
Sweden’s vice National Police Commissioner stated that approximately 40 crime clans came to Sweden solely to pursue organized crime, settling primarily in Stockholm, Södertälje, Gothenburg, Malmö, Landskrona, and Jönköping, with extended families raising children to continue criminal operations and no ambition to integrate.
Amid the general pattern of non-Swedes committing violent crimes in Sweden, a broader trend is developing in which Iran uses Muslim street gangs as proxies.
The central organization in this network is the Foxtrot gang, founded in 2010 and based in Sweden, involved in drug trafficking, arms trafficking, shootings, and contract killings across Northern Europe.
In March 2025, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned both the Foxtrot network and its leader Rawa Majid, a Swedish national of Kurdish Iranian origin and son of Kurdish Iranian refugees, accusing them of carrying out operations on behalf of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that Iran had “increasingly used criminal networks as proxies” with “no regard for the cost to communities across Europe,” and pledged to hold accountable those furthering Iran’s agenda.
Majid has operated from Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan since April 2019, directing operations via encrypted messaging under the alias “Foxkurdish.” Sweden has been unable to extradite him, and Iran has provided him sanctuary.
Fredrik Hallström, head of operations at SÄPO, Sweden’s security service, told CNN that Iran is using Swedish criminal gangs and the teenagers they recruit to carry out attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Europe, describing it as “murder-for-hire,” and stated: “Organized crime in Sweden right now is a huge vulnerability that is being used by state actors.”
John Forsberg, superintendent of the Swedish National Police, called the situation “a national disaster,” adding that children are crossing borders to commit crimes, making it a Europe-wide problem. In June 2025, the U.S. Embassy in Sweden issued a warning to American citizens that Iran could be targeting U.S. interests in Sweden using the Foxtrot network.
American officials and Mossad say the Iranian regime ordered Foxtrot to attack the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm in January 2024.
Criminal networks recruit minors because they are easier to manipulate, cannot be interrogated or convicted as adults under Scandinavian law, and face lighter legal consequences. Networks use social media and encrypted messaging to assign tasks and shield higher-level organizers.
In May 2024, a 14-year-old fired shots at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm at 2 a.m. and was not prosecuted because he was below the age of criminal responsibility.
A 15-year-old arrested in the same operation was directed by text message to retrieve a firearm and travel to the embassy; he was convicted of a weapons offense and sentenced to 11 months in a juvenile care home. In October 2024, two Foxtrot-recruited Swedish teenagers threw hand grenades at the Israeli embassy compound in Copenhagen.
A Danish court sentenced them in February to 12-year prison terms for terrorism. The Norwegian branch of Foxtrot used minors in three separate hand grenade attacks across Oslo in October and November, believed to be part of inter-gang competition for drug territory. Many of the grenades used in these attacks were salvaged from the Yugoslav wars and smuggled into Scandinavia.
Sweden recorded 30 gang-related explosions in January 2025 alone, the highest monthly figure ever recorded. In 2024, 30 percent of suspects in firearm-related murders were under 18, up from around 20 percent in prior years.
In the 15-to-20 age group, suspects for murder, manslaughter, and assault with a fatal outcome numbered 34 in 2014 and rose to 167 by 2023, a 391 percent increase. In 2024, minors accounted for 25 percent of all shooting suspects and 33 percent of those involved in fatal shootings.
Swedish police have identified 700 criminal suspects holding Swedish citizenship who are living abroad to escape justice. Iraq and the United Arab Emirates are among the main countries sheltering these fugitives, with Sweden planning police missions to Turkey and Morocco as well.
Deputy Police Chief Hector described the suspects as wanted for violent crimes, drug trafficking, forgery, and large-scale financial fraud, posing “a serious threat to public safety, both in Sweden and globally.”
The 2025 Swedish Police report found 17,500 individuals actively involved in criminal gangs, with 50,000 more indirectly linked, concentrated in areas of high migrant population density.
The 2021 Brå report found that people with a foreign background, either foreign-born or born to two foreign-born parents, made up 51 percent of all crime suspects while representing approximately 20 percent of the population.
For murder, manslaughter, and attempted murder, that figure was 73 percent; for robbery, 70 percent. In 2020, people with foreign backgrounds made up 70 percent of the most active one percent of offenders.
According to Brå’s register study, the risk of being recorded as a crime suspect is 2.5 times higher for foreign-born individuals and 3.2 times higher for Swedish-born individuals with two foreign-born parents, compared to native-born Swedes with native-born parents.
Even after controlling for age, sex, income, education, and municipality, excess risk remains at 1.8 and 1.7 times respectively. A peer-reviewed study published in Society found that in 2017, migrants representing 33 percent of the population accounted for 58 percent of those suspected of crime and 73 percent of those suspected of murder, manslaughter, and attempted murder.
According to Dagens Nyheter, at least 90 percent of gun-related murders and attempted murders were committed by immigrants or those with at least one immigrant parent.
Expressen reported that 94.5 percent of career criminal gang members in Stockholm were immigrants or had at least one immigrant parent. The overrepresentation is concentrated among those originating from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and North Africa, though Sweden publishes no official breakdown by religion.
A Lund University study published in January 2025 found that nearly two-thirds of convicted rapists in Sweden since 2000 were first- or second-generation immigrants.
Swedish Television’s analysis of 843 district court cases reported that 58 percent of those convicted of rape or attempted rape had a foreign background. In cases of stranger rape, 75 percent of perpetrators were born outside Europe, and 40 percent had been in Sweden for a year or less.
Foreign-born individuals were also disproportionately represented among suspects between 2013 and 2017, with a relative risk of lethal violence nearly four times higher than that of Swedish-born individuals with Swedish-born parents.
Individuals with an immigrant background account for 80 percent of shooting victims and 64 percent of perpetrators, according to 2025 research from the University of Gothenburg. Sweden now has the highest rate of gangland killings in Europe and the lowest average age of serious offenders on the continent.
Swedish central bank governor Erik Thedeen told the Financial Times that shootings and bombings are severe enough to risk damaging long-term economic growth. The Swedish government has called on the military to assist police, a step without modern precedent in the country.
Out of Sweden’s population of 10.61 million in 2022, 2.14 million were registered as foreign-born, more than double the number in 2000. Using a broader definition that includes Swedish-born children of two foreign-born parents, the figure rises to 26 percent of the population.
Those with at least one foreign-born parent comprise over 30 percent of the population. Among residents aged 25 to 34, one-third has a foreign background; among those aged 35 to 44, the figure is 38 percent.
Sweden’s Christian share of the population has fallen from nearly 100 percent to below 60 percent. An Islamist party called Nyans has approached the parliamentary threshold, and Islamist circles have lobbied for a parallel legal system applying sharia law to Muslim citizens.
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