Stockholm:

Sweden’s government said Wednesday it would boost security at schools after the country’s worst mass shooting left 10 dead, giving teachers the right to search students’ bags among other measures.

Schools will be required to have emergency plans for violent situations, access to schools will require keys, door codes or badges, and authorisations for camera surveillance will be simplified, Education Minister Johan Pehrson told a press conference.

Teachers and staff will be authorised to search students’ bags without warning at primary and secondary schools and adult education centres.

“We are working intensively to improve security for students, teachers and other school employees,” Pehrson said.

If adopted by parliament as expected, the new measures would enter into force on July 1, 2025.

On February 4, 35-year-old Rickard Andersson entered the Campus Risbergska adult education centre in Orebro and killed 10 people before apparently turning his gun on himself.

Officers found three weapons, shell casings and unused ammunition next to his body.

Andersson, whom police described as an unemployed recluse with no prior criminal record, had a hunting permit that licensed him to own four weapons.

He had lived isolated in his apartment since 2016, “with little contact with other people”, police said.

Police are still trying to establish a clear motive for the shooting.

Andersson had been enrolled at Campus Risbergska in the past but not attended classes since 2021.

Three days after the shooting, the government announced it would amend weapon laws and restrict access to semi-automatic guns.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Stockholm:

The Swedish government said Wednesday that it was examining the possibility of sending some inmates to serve their sentences in prisons abroad, anticipating heavy pressure on its own prisons in the coming years.

Sweden has struggled in recent years to rein in shootings and bombings linked to score-settling between rival criminal gangs.

Perpetrators are often young teens who are hired as contract killers because they are under 15, the age of criminal responsibility in Sweden.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right minority government, which is backed in parliament by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, came to power in 2022 with a vow to get tough on crime.

“One concrete consequence of this change is that more people will be incarcerated and for longer periods, which will lead to increased pressure on the Swedish prison system,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told a press conference Tuesday.

Strommer spoke as he received a government on the feasibility of prisoners serving time abroad.

“Our recommendation is that this should be done within the EU or within the Schengen area,” said Mattias Wahlstedt, who headed the probe, without giving any specific examples.

This practice has already been adopted by some countries including Norway, Belgium and Denmark.

Wahlstedt added that agreements negotiated between Sweden and the countries concerned would have to be approved by parliament.

The Seko trade union, which among others represents prison employees, said Tuesday that it opposed the government’s plan.

“Public services should not be outsourced to other countries. This is a matter of legal requirements, but it is also about preventing state activities from being sold off and run under private management,” Christer Hallkvist, responsible for labour negotiations for prison staff at Seko, said in a statement.

“Better conditions for staff and more prison places in Sweden are what will solve the problems in the Swedish Prison and Probation Service,” he added.

In recent weeks, Sweden has seen a surge in violence, with more than 30 bombings since the start of the year.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Several European countries are advising their residents to be ready for war even as Russia and Ukraine witnessed a grim milestone recently – the 1,000th day of conflict. Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark have issued advisories that ask citizens to make sure they sustain themselves in case of a crisis.

While Sweden started sending out millions of pamphlets on Monday that contained information about how to prepare for war, natural disasters and cyber or terror attacks, Finland launched a website gathering information on preparedness for different crises.

The Swedish pamphlet says: “Military threat levels are increasing. We must be prepared for the worst-case scenario — an armed attack on Sweden”.

The 32-page booklet ‘If Crisis Or War Comes’ contains tips such as stocking up on non-perishable food and water, keeping cash on hand and growing fruit and vegetables in gardens.

“If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will never give up. All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false,” reads a line in the booklet.

It is an updated version of a pamphlet that Sweden has issued five times since World War II.

The new version doesn’t mention Russia, Ukraine or any other country by name.

The brochure is available in print in both Swedish and English and digital versions are available in several other languages — including Arabic, Farsi, Ukrainian, Polish, Somali and Finnish.

Finland’s website asserts authorities are “well prepared for self-defence”.

The country shares a 1,340-kilometre border with Russia and it has maintained a higher level of preparedness.

After Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland announced plans to build a 200-kilometre border fence – 10 feet tall and topped with barbed wire – with Russia which is due to be completed by 2026.

Both Swedish and Finnish checklists include easy-to-cook food. Finland has also asked its citizens to arrange for a backup power supply.

Meanwhile, Norway has urged its citizens to be prepared to manage on their own for a week in the event of war and other threats.

“We have sent out 2.2 million paper copies, one for each household in Norway,” BBC quoted Tore Kamfjord, responsible for the campaign of self-preparedness at the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (DSB), as saying.

Tins of beans, energy bars, pasta, and medicines – including iodine tablets in case of a nuclear accident – are included in the list of items to be kept at home.

The Nordic neighbours Sweden and Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment to join the US-led defence alliance NATO in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Norway was a founding member of the Western defensive alliance.

Denmark’s emergency management agency, as per a BBC report, emailed its citizens details on the water, food and medicine they would need to get through a crisis for three days.

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin eased Russia’s rules for nuclear strikes days after the US allowed Ukraine to fire long-range American-made missiles into Russian territory.

Twenty-three of the 32 NATO members – up from just three a decade ago – have now agreed to reach the target of spending two per cent of gross domestic product on defence.

The growing consensus, however, is that Europe will have to do more to make sure it can stand on its own.

Stockholm:

Swedish prosecutors confirmed Tuesday a rape probe following media reports that French footballer Kylian Mbappe was being investigated after a visit to Stockholm but did not name the suspect.

On Monday, Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen reported that a rape investigation had been opened following Mbappe’s two-day visit to the Nordic capital.

“In response to media reports about a suspected rape in Stockholm, the prosecutor can confirm that a criminal report has been submitted to the police,” Sweden’s Prosecution Authority said in a statement.

It added that the alleged incident occurred at a hotel on October 10, but did not name a suspect and said no further information could be shared for the moment.

Expressen on Monday identified Mbappe as the suspect, citing anonymous sources, while Aftonbladet said Tuesday it had also had obtained information confirming Mbappe was the suspect.

Expressen said Mbappe was “reasonably suspected” of rape and sexual assault, the lower of two grades of suspicion in the Swedish legal system.

Contacted by AFP on Monday, Mbappe’s entourage said it had no knowledge of a legal complaint made against him.

The French international was not selected for his country’s latest round of Nations League matches, so visited the Swedish capital with a group of people last Thursday.

According to Aftonbladet, they dined at a restaurant before going to a nightclub. Mbappe and the group left Sweden on Friday.

Aftonbladet said the complaint was filed on Saturday after the alleged victim had sought medical attention.

Expressen reported Tuesday that police had seized some clothing as evidence, saying it consisted of women’s underwear, a pair of black trousers and a black top.

On Monday, Mbappe himself claimed in a post on X that there was a link between the Aftonbladet report and his hearing before a French league committee on Tuesday, in his bitter dispute with his former club Paris Saint-Germain over what he says are unpaid wages.

Mbappe claims he is owed 55 million euros ($60 million) by the Qatari-owned French champions.

“FAKE NEWS !!!!. It’s becoming so predictable, on the eve of the hearing, as if by chance,” Mbappe posted.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Stockholm:

Toddlers should not be allowed to watch screens at all, Sweden told parents on Monday.

Children under the age of two should be kept away from digital media and television completely, the country’s Public Health Agency said.

Kids between the ages of two and five should be limited to a maximum of one hour of screen time a day, it said in new recommendations, while those aged six to 12 should spend no more than an hour or two a day in front of a screen.

Teenagers aged 13 to 18 should be limited to two to three hours per day, the agency said.

“For too long, smartphones and other screens have been allowed to enter every aspect of our children’s lives,” Public Health Minister Jakob Forssmed told reporters.

The minister said that Swedish teens aged 13 to 16 spend six and a half hours a day on average in front of their screens, outside of school hours.

Forssmed said that didn’t leave “a lot of time for communal activities, physical activity or adequate sleep”, and lamented a Swedish “sleep crisis” noting that more than half of 15-year-olds did not get enough sleep.

The health agency also recommended that kids not use screens before going to bed and that phones and tablets be kept out of bedroom at night.

It cited research showing that excessive screen use can lead to poor sleep, depression and body dissatisfaction.

Sweden’s government has previously said it is looking at a ban on smartphones in primary schools.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Activists of radical anti-blasphemy party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan protest against the burning of the Koran in Sweden, in Karachi on January 27, 2023. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

Swedish prosecutors on Wednesday (August 28, 2024) charged two men with inciting ethnic hatred over several protests involving the burning of Korans in 2023, which sparked widespread outrage in Muslim countries.

Salwan Momika, a Christian Iraqi who burned Korans at a slew of protests, and co-protester Salwan Najem were charged with “agitation against an ethnic group” on four occasions in the summer of 2023.

“Both men are prosecuted for having on these four occasions made statements and treated the Koran in a manner intended to express contempt for Muslims because of their faith,” senior prosecutor Anna Hankkio said in a statement.

According to the charge sheet, the duo desecrated the Koran, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims – in one case outside a Stockholm Mosque.

“In my opinion, the men’s statements and actions fall under the provisions on agitation against an ethnic or national group and it is important that this matter is tried in court,” the prosecutor added.

Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were strained by the pair’s protests.

Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July 2023, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.

In August last year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after the Koran burnings had made the country a “prioritised target”.

The Swedish government condemned the desecrations while noting the country’s constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly laws.

Earlier this month, prosecutors charged Swedish-Danish right-wing activist Rasmus Paludan with the same crime over a 2022 protest in the southern city of Malmo, which also included burning the Koran.

In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted a man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 Koran burning, the first time the country’s court system had tried the charge for desecrating Islam’s holy book.

Prosecutors have previously said that under Swedish law, the burning of a Koran can be seen as a critique of the book and the religion, and thus be protected under free speech.

However, depending on the context and statements made at the time, it can also be considered “agitation against an ethnic group.”

Virat Kohli is arguably the most popular cricketer on the planet, and is loved by a billion people in his own country. He even boasts 270 million followers on Instagram. However, one man who does not recognize him is legendary Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Filming a video with YouTube content creator ‘IShowSpeed’, Ibrahimovic could not recognize Virat Kohli, and admitted that he had not heard of him before either. Speed then referred to Kohli as the ‘GOAT’ (Greatest Of All Time) of cricket.

At first, Speed (real name Darren Jason Watkins Jr.) asked Ibrahimovic if he knew Virat Kohli. Hearing a no from Ibrahimovic, Speed proceeded to show him a picture of Kohli. However, much to Speed’s surprise, Ibrahimovic failed to recognize him.

“No. I’ve never seen cricket in my life. Not being disrespectful, but no,” said Ibrahimovic, when Speed showed him Kohli’s picture.

“Is he some kind of big player?” asked Ibrahimovic.

Watch: Zlatan Ibrahimovic fails to recognize Virat Kohli

| WATCH: Speed asks Zlatan Ibrahimovic if he knows Virat Kohli pic.twitter.com/qd5t5w8ZJp

— Speedy HQ (@iShowSpeedHQ) July 9, 2024

“He’s the GOAT,” replies Speed. “He is the GOAT in a different aspect, man. You’ve got to learn the different GOATs in different aspects,” continued the 19-year-old YouTube sensation.

It is not a surprise that Ibrahimovic may not know Kohli, as cricket is not a widely-played sport in Sweden. The country ranks 55th in ICC’s T20I team rankings.

Ibrahimovic – who ranks 15th in the list of most goals scored in football history (561) – retired from football at the age of 41 last year. His last club was Italian giants AC Milan.

American YouTuber Speed, on the other hand, boasts more than 26 million subscribers on YouTube, and is popular for his love for Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. However, Speed is also a fan of Virat Kohli, and recently went to watch India vs Pakistan during the 2024 T20 World Cup at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York.

Gothenburg:

The killer was only 14 and had lived in youth homes as a ward of the authorities since he was eight.

A year ago, a gang helped the boy escape, put him up in a hotel, and gave him cannabis, food, and new clothes. Six days later, gang members told him it was time to repay them for their kindness. They had a job for him.

Together with another youth, the boy, who as a juvenile cannot be identified, shot dead a 33-year-old Hells Angels biker. He was convicted by a court that described the case as a gangland contract killing.

As he was too young to be sentenced, he was handed back to social services and sent to another youth home.

Sweden has long prided itself on one of the world’s most generous social safety nets, with a state that looks after vulnerable people at all stages of life.

But these days it also has another distinction: by far the highest per capita rate of gun violence in the EU. Last year 55 people were shot dead in 363 separate shootings in a country of just 10 million people. By comparison, there were just six fatal shootings in the three other Nordic countries – Norway, Finland, and Denmark – combined.

In an increasing number of cases, courts have found the epidemic of violence emerging from Sweden’s archipelago of youth homes, built to serve the dual purpose of looking after children in state care and punishing youth offenders.

According to accounts for this story from eight sources including a former gang member, several youth home workers, prosecutors and criminologists, the homes have turned into recruiting grounds for gangs, who use them to enlist killers too young to be jailed.

TROUBLED TEEN TO ‘CAREER CRIMINAL’

Yayha, now 23, was first sent to a youth home at 16, finding himself bunking with seven other boys in a dormitory wing in Gothenburg, the gritty port city on Sweden’s west coast that houses the biggest harbour in Scandinavia.

His father had died a couple of years earlier. He had dropped out of school and was convicted of assault and theft, beating up other kids, and stealing their phones and clothes.

During his year in the home, members of one of Gothenburg’s criminal gangs became his new family, he told Reuters in a coffee shop by the harbour in the city where he now works as a carpenter after escaping the gang life.

“I was a troubled teen when I entered and came out a career criminal. I went from fighting and stealing from other kids to selling drugs by the kilo,” said Yayha, who asked that his surname not be used to prevent his former gang from finding him.

“You wanted the respect, the clothes, the rings, the money but also friendship. They were the people you hung out with anyway. Later it became more serious and you had to do things that you really didn’t want to, but that is the way it works.”

The wave of violence has come to overshadow all else in Swedish politics, driving the rise of a rightwing coalition with the support of the far right, which came to power in 2022, ending the latest eight-year period of rule by the Social Democrats, Sweden’s dominant political party since the 1930s.

The new government has promised to tackle crime. So far it has further restricted Sweden’s previously generous immigration policies, introduced harsher sentences for gun crimes, and given police increased surveillance powers. Even the military has been called on to help out.

“It is obvious that our system wasn’t built for this type of criminality,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told Reuters.

He said the government was working on a revamp of the entire youth criminality prevention system, including giving more powers to social services. New youth prisons would house the most hardened criminals, keeping them separate from youth homes.

“I think it is clear that in reality, the state-run homes have functioned as a kind of recruitment base from the criminal networks,” Strommer said. “It’s a monumental failure.”

‘LINKEDIN FOR YOUNG CRIMINALS’

Sweden’s youth homes have varying degrees of security, with around 700 of the most troubled youths housed in 21 homes run by a state body, the National Board of Institutional Care (SiS).

Children with social problems can find themselves sleeping in beds next to those who have committed serious crimes. Most children stay for less than a year but some can be held for up to four years.

The homes are often fenced off, with schools and parks on the premises. While the youths are not allowed to leave without permission, security is often lax.

Residents have access to phones and tablets making it possible for gang members to contact them from outside. In one case now being tried, prosecutors have charged a boy of 15 with planning and ordering three murders in Stockholm from inside a youth home.

Birgitta Dahlberg, head of youth care at the SiS, told Reuters it was unfair to blame the homes for their inability to deal with serious violent offenders, which they were not designed to handle.

“When it comes to serious criminality, it is fair to say that the legislation has not given us the right conditions,” she said, noting that until regulations were changed just weeks ago staff did not even have sufficient authority to take away residents’ mobile phones.

Children as young as 12 are often gang members already by the time they arrive, said Alexander, who works at the Gothenburg home where Yahya stayed. He declined to give his surname as he was not authorised to speak publicly.

“Out of our 40 boys, around half are gang affiliated when they come here,” he told Reuters.

“If you put two new kids in a wing where six out of eight inmates are with the Foxtrot gang, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what could happen,” he said, referring to one of the largest gangs believed to have hundreds of members.

Two other youth home workers, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave similar accounts of rampant gang membership among their charges.

In theory, the youth homes aim to rehabilitate young offenders to prevent them from becoming adult criminals. But according to a report released weeks ago by the Swedish National Audit Office which supervises the government, nine out of ten gang-affiliated youngsters at youth homes go on to relapse into crime, and almost eight out of ten eventually end up in prison.

The youth homes seem to do more harm than good, said Stockholm prosecutor Lisa dos Santos, who has handled numerous cases of youth gang crimes.

“One police officer described them as LinkedIn for young criminals,” she said. “You wonder what effect they have had in spreading gang crime when boys from different parts of the country are put together.”

While Swedish law allows criminal prosecution of people as young as 15, those under 18 are very rarely sent to prison even for serious crimes. Dos Santos said gangs are exploiting this, deliberately recruiting children to commit acts that would lead to a long jail sentence for an adult.

Sweden has about 14,000 active gang criminals and an additional 48,000 people loosely affiliated with gangs, according to a police report last year.

Other European countries such as the Netherlands, France, and Belgium are also struggling with violent gangs, but Sweden has outpaced them all in gun violence, by wide margins.

In 2022, there were 73 youths in Sweden aged 15-20 suspected of murder or attempted murder with firearms, up from just 10 a decade earlier, according to the Crime Prevention Board, a government agency.

According to EU statistics agency Eurostat, 25 people aged 15-24 were killed by gun violence in Sweden in 2021, second in the EU only to France, which had 40 such deaths across a population six times the size of Sweden’s.

Nils Duquet, director of the Flemish Peace Institute, a leading European gun violence think tank, said the reliance of Sweden’s gangs on young recruits to commit violent crimes had created a different culture around guns than elsewhere in Europe.

Elsewhere, criminal gangs tend to reserve access to guns for older and more senior members, he said. In Sweden, the youngest are expected to pull the trigger.

“Because there are so many young criminals with access to guns, that makes it so violent,” Duquet said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Iran has summoned Sweden’s charge d’affaires in Tehran over “baseless and biased” accusations made by a Swedish official, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on June 1.

Sweden’s security service said on Thursday that the Iranian government had been using criminal networks within Sweden to carry out violent acts against other states, groups and individuals.

Seamstress Tove Lycke works on NATO flags, at the flag manufacturer Flagghuset, in Akersberga, outside Stockholm, Sweden, March 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

INS Kolkata assists two merchant vessels hit in Gulf of Aden

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CJI asks if Speaker did not contradict Supreme Court to bank on legislative majority to decide Shinde camp as ‘real’ Shiv Sena

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Sandeshkhali reports misleading, Bengal safest for women, says Mamata Banerjee

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Almost 60% of the funds received by national political parties are from ‘unknown’ sources

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CCS approves development of AMCA, India’s fifth-gen fighter

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India sending unemployed poor to Israel: Arundhati Roy

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Tribal Affairs Ministry, ISRO to collaborate on use of V-SAT centres for Internet in 80 tribal villages in pilot project

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Centre releases additional DA to employees, pensioners

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Sweden officially joins NATO after completing its accession process, ending decades of neutrality

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Days after PM Modi congratulated him, Pakistan PM Sharif thanks him for the greeting

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Rahul Gandhi likely to seek re-election from Wayanad

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Every citizen has a right to criticise abrogation of Article 370: SC

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