Sweden's PM admits 'we've lost control' as man who burned Koran is assassinated during live stream - with 'foreign power' feared to be behind the hit amid gang violence and gun crime sweeping country
Sweden's prime minister has voiced serious concerns about sweeping crime levels in the country as he claims a 'foreign power' may have been involved in the live stream shooting of an anti-Islam activist on Wednesday night
Iraqi refugee, Salwan Momika, 38, repeatedly burned the Koran in 2023, sparking outrage in Muslim countries.
But he was ruthlessly gunned down in an apartment in the city of Sodertalje, south of Stockholm, investigators said Thursday, with Sweden's PM Ulf Kristersson suggesting 'a foreign power' might have been behind the hit.
Prosecutor Rasmus Oman confirmed that an investigation had been opened into the murder of Momika and that five people had been arrested.
'We're in the very early stages... there's a lot of information gathering. Five people have been detained suspected of involvement in the crime,' Oman said.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters at a press conference: 'I can guarantee that the security services are deeply involved in this because there is obviously a risk that there is also a link to foreign power.'
The fatal shooting comes amid an 'extreme' wave of violence sweeping the once peaceful Nordic country.
National Police Chief Petra Lundh spoke about the ongoing violence following the killing, saying: 'It is a wave of violence that once again shows the brutality and ruthlessness that exists in organised crime. Consideration for other people's lives is something that has completely ceased to exist in these circles'.
Kristersson echoed the concerns, admitting that it is 'obvious that we have no control over the wave of violence.'

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson admitted the country had 'lost control' over the wave of violence following the shooting of Salwan Momika

Five people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in Momika's murder

Quran burning by Salwan Momika at Benny Fredriksson square in Stockholm on October 21, 2023
'We are in a new wave of violence, that is quite obvious. Explosions are increasing, basically one every day,' the PM added
'It will take the entire century to solve these problems'.
Swedish media reported that Momika was streaming live on TikTok at the time he was shot.
A video seen by MailOnline showed police picking up a phone and ending a livestream that appeared to be from Momika's TikTok account.
The Aftonbladet newspaper said the attacker was able to gain entry into the building through the roof.
In August, Momika and a fellow protester Salwan Najem were charged with 'agitation against an ethnic group' on four occasions in the summer of 2023.
According to the charge sheet, the two desecrated the Koran, including burning it, while making derogatory remarks about Muslims - on one occasion outside a Stockholm mosque.
It postponed the ruling to February 3, saying that 'because Salwan Momika has died, more time is needed'.
'I'm next on the list,' Najem chillingly wrote on X after Momika's death, telling Swedish media that he had received death threats.
The Iraqi refugee was notorious for staging public demonstrations where he burnt and destroyed the Islamic holy book - a stunt that enraged Muslims around the world.
Five people have been arrested in connection to Momika's death, police said on their website. They did not say if the shooter was among those detained.

Anti-Islamist activist Salwan Momika who sparked outrage for burning a Koran has been shot dead in Sweden

Police are currently investigating the murder of Momika. Here they are pictured outside the apartment where the shooting took place
Momika first sparked global anger in June 2023 when he set a Koran on fire and stomped on the holy book outside Stockholm's main mosque, with several Muslim countries condemning Sweden for allowing the Iraqi man to perform the act during the Eid al-Adha holiday and the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Burning the Koran is seen by Muslims as a blasphemous act because they consider it the literal word of God.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE joined in the chorus of condemnation, with the Biden Administration also calling the protest 'disrespectful and hurtful'.
Dozens of Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in response to Momika's stunt, with videos showing an angry mob breaking through an iron gate and climbing on top of the compound.
The demonstrators also distributed leaflets that carried messages in Arabic and English that said: 'Our constitution is the Koran. Our leader is Al-Sadr'.
'Yes, yes to the Koran,' was also scrawled on the gate leading to the embassy, according to the photographer.
Momika later pulled a similar stunt, in which he burned the Koran outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm.
The activist received a string of death threats as a result.
But speaking to Aftonbladet in April 2023, Momika said he never intended his Koran burnings to cause any trouble in Sweden, where he had lived since 2018.
'I don't want to harm this country that received me and preserved my dignity,' he said.

Police is seen at a crime scene in an apartment block in Soedertaelje, south of the Swedish capital Stockholm on January 30, 2025

Protestor Salwan Momika raises a copy of the Koran during his demonstration outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, 20 July 2023

Salwan Momika holds a flag of Sweden as he protests outside a mosque in Stockholm on June 28, 2023

Dozens of Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on June 29 over the burning of a Koran by Salwan Momika

Protesters gather at the entrance to the Swedish embassy in Baghdad, Iraq a day after Momika, a protester, burned a copy of the Quran in Sweden
In March 2024, Momika left Sweden to seek asylum in Norway, telling AFP that Sweden's freedom of expression and protection of human rights was 'a big lie'.
Norway deported him back to Sweden several weeks later.
In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted another 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'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14342269/Swedens-PM-admits-weve-lost-control-man-burned-Koran-assassinated-live-stream-foreign-power-feared-hit-amid-gang-violence-gun-crime-sweeping-country.html
An anti-Islam activist who sparked outrage across Muslim countries for burning the Koran has been shot dead in Sweden during a livestream on TikTok.
Salwan Momika, 38, was ruthlessly gunned down in an apartment in the city of Sodertalje on Wednesday night.
Swedish media reported that Momika was streaming live on TikTok at the time he was shot.
A Stockholm court was due to rule on Thursday whether Momika, a Christian Iraqi who burned Korans at a slew of protest in 2023, and his co-protester Salwan Najem, were guilty of inciting ethnic hatred.
According to the charge sheet, the duo had desecrated and burned the Koran and had also made derogatory remarks about Muslims.
It postponed the ruling to February 3, saying that 'because Salwan Momika has died, more time is needed'.
Police said they rushed to the scene, where they found Momika suffering from gun wounds. He was rushed to hospital and was later confirmed dead.
Tabloid Aftonbladet reported that the shooter was able to enter the building through the roof.
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'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14341423/Christian-Iraqi-burnt-Koran-Sweden-shot-dead.html
CHILD assassins as young as ELEVEN are carrying out machine-gun murders on the streets of Sweden for up to £13,000 a hit... and CANNOT be prosecuted
Swedish gangs are increasingly recruiting children to carry out contract killings, authorities have warned, with the country being overrun by a 'gig economy of gang violence' in recent months.
The Nordic nation has the worst rate of gun violence in the EU, while the number of murder cases involving children more than tripled from 31 counts in the first eight months of 2023 to 102 in the same period of this year, according to authorities.
Youngsters are lured by recruiters on social media platforms such as Snapchat and Telegram, with group chats titled 'bombing today' and 'who wants to shoot someone in Stockholm' reportedly attracting thousands of members.
The children - who are often vulnerable and from poor backgrounds - are promised quick cash, with bounties of up to £13,000 offered for a successful hit.
Once signed up, the young recruits carry out gang bosses' dirty work, assassinating relatives of rival gangsters and other targets, often without ever meeting the person who is ordering the killing.
Crime bosses increasingly seek out children under 15 as they are too young to be prosecuted in Sweden, according to police, with a boy aged just 11 years old reportedly involved in a recent case.
Children travelling across the country to commit the crimes for cash is becoming 'the new normal', Erik Lindblad, head of the police's gang violence taskforce, warned last month.
He said that online chat groups were advertising jobs to 'tens of thousands' of young members, inviting them to volunteer to carry out a hit.
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A teenager is pictured armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, spraying bullets into the house of the ex-girlfriend of a well-known rapper as a scare tactic.
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Gunshots pictured following the attack, apparently designed to scare the ex-girlfriend of a rapper

The bloody nighty worn by a two-year-old girl when she was shot in the stomach

Three teenagers were sentenced after a man was murdered while eating dinner at a restaurant south of Stockholm in March, with the 17-year-old who is believed to have fired the fatal shot handed a jail term
Gangs have increasingly sought out young girls and children with mental disabilities to carry out the killings, as they believe they are less likely to be suspected by their target.
They deliberately hire children as Swedish law dictates that under-15s cannot be prosecuted, a law which critics say is in urgent need of reform.
Confronted by the increased involvement of young people in violent gang crime, prosecutors are increasingly seeking imprisonment rather than 'closed care' for child suspects, according to Swedish media.
Three teenagers were sentenced after a man was murdered while eating dinner at a restaurant south of Stockholm in March, with the 17-year-old who is believed to have fired the fatal shot handed a jail term rather than youth detention.
The teenager, who is understood to have used an automatic weapon, was given eight years while a 19-year-old man was given life in prison and their 16-year-old accomplice put in closed care.
According to prosecutor Niksa Lucic, the circumstances of the murder suggest that it took place in a gangland context.
In August, a 16-year-old boy was arrested after shots were fired at an apartment door near Stockholm.
He was charged last month with attempted murder and aggravated weapons offences after a preliminary police investigation found he was put up to the hit by an 'anonymous client'.
They say he accepted the contract for 65,000 Swedish kroner (£4,600) and had told a friend on Instagram: 'I just want to kill someone - I don't care who it is'.
Carin Götblad, a police chief in Stockholm at the National Operations Department, told The Telegraph that child suspects often show no remorse for their actions.
'The investigators tell me that some of them are very calm, they don't cry, they say nothing or "no comment" They are totally lacking in empathy,' she said.
'Some people say, "they don't understand what they have done". They may not fully understand the consequences of what they have done, but if you are 14 years old and you shoot a person in the head – you will understand that this man is dead.'
Dramatic video obtained by MailOnline last year showed a teenager armed with an AK-47 spraying bullets into the home of a terrified mother and her young child in a Stockholm suburb.
The flat is the home of the ex-girlfriend of a well-known rapper and the attack is believed to have been a scare tactic.
A frightened mother, who lives in the block, told MailOnline at the time: 'It was crazy. It wasn't a small gun. It was a Kalashnikov. It is terrible that attacks like this are normalised.'
In another case which sent shockwaves through Sweden, a two-year-old girl was shot in the stomach through her stuffed Winne the Pooh toy while her father was killed and mother seriously injured by a 16-year-old gunman.
The horror attack, described by one lawyer as the most brutal case she had ever worked on, unfolded in October last year when the attacker broke into the family's home in Stockholm's Vastberga district.
A Swedish court heard how the teenage shooter gunned down the father at near-point-blank range before turning the automatic rifle on the mother, who was clutching her two-year-old daughter in her arms.
'It's so brutal that you can hardly believe it,' Swedish prosecutor Lisa dos Santos said.
'The father was shot lying on the couch, the mother was shot in the back. She was a doctor, so she tried to save herself and the child, and they both survived. I would say that's the worst thing I've ever had in my career.'

Picture shows the suspect, 16, undated. A two-year-old girl, her father, 40, and mother were shot in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 12, 2023
It later emerged that the killer had broken into the wrong house because his victims had the same last name as his intended target.
The next day, the same attacker carried out another heinous contract killing of two women - a 60-year-old grandmother and a 20-year-old - who were relatives of a rival gang member.
After he was caught, a Swedish court handed the teenager a record jail sentence of 12 years.
Police have warned how the crime bosses who use youngsters to mete out bloodshed on their behalf are often abroad and can escape justice.
Taskforce leader Lindblad has urged social media companies to act to police their platforms and for society to take such online activities more seriously.
'If a criminal had stood in a square and shouted out to 10,000 children, "Murder, Malmö, 250,000 kroner, who will take it?", then I am quite sure that society would have reacted,' he said, adding that police are working to be more present online.

Picture shows the Winnie the Pooh plush toy, undated, being held by the two-year-old girl when she and her mother were shot in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 12, 2023
Last month, a Swedish teenager was arrested in Spain for allegedly leading a gun-for-hire service which used 'child soldiers' in Sweden and Denmark.
The 14-year-old allegedly 'played a key role' in recruiting, paying and instructing youngsters on how to carry out attacks via the Telegram messaging app, Spanish cops said.
He would also organise deliveries of weapons and explosives including assault rifles, it is claimed. One teenager was given an escape plan involving an electric scooter.
The going rate for a kill was said to be between 20,000 and 50,000 euros.
The boy's parents were also arrested and police said the family home in Alicante was used as an 'operations centre'.
Deadly violence linked to feuds between criminal gangs has escalated in recent years, with hundreds of shootings and several bombings carried out.


Mikael Tenezos, 'The Greek' (L), and Rawa Majid, 'The Kurdish Fox' (R), are reportedly high-profile drug pushing gangsters at war with each other in Sweden
In recent years, mafia groups abroad have called Sweden a 'haven' for their activities, while organised crime groups have infiltrated business sectors and found ways to smuggle military-grade weapons into the country.
September 2023 was a particularly bloody month, with over 40 violent episodes and 12 deaths recorded in just 20 days - earning the moniker 'Black September'.
In all of 2023, 53 people were killed in shootings across Sweden, which is home to around 10.5 million people.
In 2022, that figure stood at 62 - and Stockholm's per-capita murder rate was roughly 30 times that of London's.
Gangsters carry out personal vendettas against each other - or hire youngsters to do their dirty work.
Almost half the suspects in the gun-related murders in 2022 were aged between 15 and 20 - youngsters who have been groomed by gangs.
'Kurdish Fox', whose real name is Rawa Majid, became a household name in Sweden 2022 when the feud between the 38-year-old's criminal network Foxtrot and the Dalen gang, led by Mikael 'The Greek' Tenezos, 25, spread fear in several cities as they fought over shares of the country's highly lucrative drugs market.
The two alleged kingpins have fled abroad, and are now believed to run their operations through middle men.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14148313/child-assassins-machine-gun-murders-Sweden-prosecuted.html
How Sweden became a 'haven' for mafia gangs and the EU's crime capital due to surging migration: As murders surge, police and politicians say the nation is at crisis point
Over the course of one night last year, three people were killed in separate attacks across Sweden - three of many violent attacks to rock the country in 2023.
The first victim was an 18-year-old man who was shot dead in a Stockholm suburb on September 27. Just hours later, one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Jordbro, south of the city.
Then, as if two killings weren't enough, Soha Saad - a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher living with her brother and parents - died in an explosion in Uppsala, west of Stockholm, in the early hours of September 28.
In the aftermath, one neighbour described the blast as being 'like a war scene' and 'something you see on the news from Afghanistan.'
The violence meted out across the region in those 12 hours made international headlines, but to many living in Sweden - did not come as a surprise.
In a series of interviews, Swedish academics, a politician and a high ranking police officer have spoken to MailOnline about the multi-faceted crisis, describing a nation at crisis point that is ill equipped to tackle the scale of the violence.

Sweden has been described as a 'haven' for mafia gangs off the back of surging migration. Backlash against immigration has in turn - in the past - led to clashes between groups and Police (pictured), who are swamped with trying to crack down of rising levels of gang violence

Police vans on fire amid clashes between protesters and police

Smoke billows from burning tires, pallets and fireworks during riots in the Rosengard neighbourhood of Malmo, Sweden
Jale Poljarevius, a senior police officer and chief of intelligence for Sweden's Mitt region, described the 'deadly violence' as being 'very serious' to MailOnline.
Deadly violence linked to feuds between criminal gangs has escalated in recent years against the backdrop of high levels of migration into the country.
Hundreds of shootings and several bombings have been carried out. Police say 62,000 people are linked to criminal networks in the country.
Meanwhile, Sweden's share of non-western population grew from 2 percent to 15 percent in just 20 years.
Mafia groups abroad have called the country a 'haven' for their activities, while organised crime groups have infiltrated business sectors and found ways to smuggle military-grade weapons into the country.
Many, including within the government, have gone as far to call on a full closure of Sweden's borders to asylum seekers.
The killings have turned Sweden, seen for many years from the outside as a peaceful Scandinavian welfare state, into the European Union's homicide capital.
Gangsters carry out personal vendettas against each other - or hire youngsters to do their dirty work. Almost half the suspects in the gun-related murders in 2022 were aged between 15 and 20 - youngsters who have been groomed by gangs that are, statistics show, largely run by second-generation immigrants.
Young hitmen have admitted to being hired to shoot and kill rivals, being paid as much as a million krona (around £73,000) to do so, or as little as a few thousand.
Experts say the violence has been driven by a high level of immigration and a failure of migrant integration into society.
But gang activity in Sweden is not limited to street violence and drugs. Organised crime has also taken hold in the country, with many gangs also committing fraud.
The wealthy state has taken in more asylum seekers escaping the Middle East and the Balkans than many other European countries.
There is a direct link to migration and gang crime in the country.
There has been a failure to integrate new arrivals into the country.

Police are seen at the scene of an explosion in Uppsala on September 28, 2023. The blast killed 24-year-old Soha Saad,

Soha Saad, 24, was killed in the early hours of September 29 after a blast tore through her home in Uppsala, Sweden. The true targets of the attack were her neighbours across the street, but those responsible got the wrong house.

Police are seen outside of Soha Saad's home after an explosion tore through it

Damage is seen to Soha Saad's house in Uppsala after she was killed in the bomb blast. She was the third person to die in gang violence that night
Violence has begun to spread into the more affluent areas of Sweden, but it is still migrant communities that are seeing the worst of the killings.
Most gang shooting suspects are young men with foreign backgrounds - but are often first or second generation immigrants, therefore Swedish citizens.
Göran Adamson, a political consultant and associate professor with a PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE), told MailOnline that there is a clear link between migration and the gang crime in Sweden.
Pointing to his 2020 study 'Migrants and Crime in Sweden in the 21st Century', he said someone with a migrant background can be two, three or even four times more likely to be involved with or a suspect in criminal activity than an average Swede.
'When some people say there is no connection between migration and crime, they are not telling the truth,' he said, adding: 'The data from the crime prevention agency tells us this. These are just the obvious statistics.'
He continued: 'In the suburbs, there is a lot of shooting and a lot of killing going on and its mostly gang related. I would say 99 percent gang related.
'When someone is shot - if someone who is under 20 - is shot or two people are shot in a suburb of Stockholm, you can almost count on them being members of one gang who are killing members of another gang.'
The country does have a very big problem with gang violence, but now more people are being caught in the crossfire as turf wars and vendettas spill out across Sweden.
For example, the targets of the bomb attack in which Soha Saad was killed were actually her neighbours across the street, who belonged to a criminal gang. The perpetrators got the wrong address.
Gang violence is a big problem. It has increased substantially and it is taking a lot of lives.
Some of these killings are now innocents – innocents are being killed, for several reasons. Sometimes gangs mistake a civilian for a gang member and shoot the wrong person. Sometimes they deliberately kill someone who is a relative of a gang member, but who isn't a criminal themselves. Sometimes they do drive-by shootings and innocents happen to be at location and get killed.
'So that means that we do have a problem and it's very serious and not just gang members, but also sometimes completely random.'

26-year-old C.Gambino, whose real name is Karar Ramadan , was one of Sweden's biggest rap stars. He was shot dead in a parking garage

C.Gambino parked his car at a garage in Gothenburg where one or more attackers were lying in wait

He was shot and hit by at least two bullets, police said, with pictures from the scene showing several bullet holes in a glass door
A lawyer has warned the system could collapse under the strain 'because we simply have no means of coping with the rapid increase of serious crime, and we don't know what's going to happen after that.'

Police say much of the violence was down to a drug gang known as 'Foxtrot' - led by notorious leader Rawa Majid (pictured), 'the Kurdish Fox' and based in Uppsala

Ismail Abdo, aka 'Strawberry', the former partner-in-crime to Rawa Majid. They had been feuding and Ismail's mother was shot dead.
In April 2022, Sweden's then-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson proclaimed that migrant integration in the country had failed, and that it had in turn led to parallel societies forming and gang violence escalating.
Political naivety and cluelessness have brought us to this point. Irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration have brought us to this point.
Exclusion and parallel societies feed the criminal gangs, providing space for them to ruthlessly recruit children and train future killers. Swedish legislation is not designed for gang wars and child soldiers.
The Swedish government and Swedish agencies took too long to respond to these problems and let them grow too strong and too powerful - these criminal networks.
If you come from a culture where the state is very weak then you have other structures - you have your family, you have your extended family, you have your clan, you have your tribe - and you care very little about the state, so it makes more sense to join a gang because the gang is where you have your affiliation, where you have your trust and honour and then you can fight against the state
'You see the state as your enemy, and then if your state is also your enemy, it's OK to abuse the state and to try to get money from the state.'
Criminals describe Sweden as a 'haven' for their activities.

A tribute is seen for Ali Shafaei, a young man who was killed in Swedish gang violence

An AK-47, seized by Swedish police, is seen on a table. Jale Poljarevius, a senior police officer and chief of intelligence for Sweden's Mitt region, told MailOnline gangs are often found with military-grade weapons

A handgun is seen on a table in this photograph from a police seizure

Another firearm, along with two magazines and several rounds, is seen on a table having been seized by police in Sweden

A hand grenade is seen lying on a table after having been seized by police

Police officers assess a board showing images of seized weapons in Rinkeby police station in Rinkeby, Sweden. Firearms have flooded into the country in recent years
'We see shootings, where they're throwing hand grenades at each other or blowing each other up with explosive devices.'

Jale Poljarevius, a senior police officer and chief of intelligence for Sweden's Mitt region, described the 'deadly violence' as being 'very serious' to MailOnline, but said that on top of the gang warfare, there is also a huge issue with organised crime and fraud in Sweden
'The main economy for criminal gangs is not drugs, it's fraud. Fraud is what is giving the most money to the criminal gangs and to organised crime.'
Poljarevius explained that gangs have found ways to exploit Sweden's welfare state, meaning that the country is putting money in the accounts of criminals who apply for assistance from the state, such as medical assistance. 'We call this assistance fraud,' he said. 'That brings in billions of crowns to organised crime.'
'But we cannot work as fast as we want because this is a democracy. You have to have special criteria that you have to fill. You have to go to the court.
'But the other side, they have no rules at all.'
One solution is to halt asylum seekers to give Sweden time to get on top of the issue of gang crime.
Another solution: 'to give up'. He explained 'by giving up I mean, giving up trying to understand and trying find common ground.
'I think it is sometimes foolish and truly unnecessary even to try to integrate people if there are no shared values in the first place at all.
'When I say that the solution would be to give up, then I mean that the solution would be to say to this person - for instance, an Islamist - is to say that we can continue living, but you cannot live here, and we simply cannot live together. You have to live somewhere else.
'Unless there is some kind of underlying commonality beforehand, I think it is futile and naive and excessively optimistic to assume that multiculturalism works, to assume that we will in the end manage to live peacefully in harmony together.'

Smoke comes out of windows after an explosion hit an apartment building in Annedal, central Gothenburg, Sweden
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13501783/How-Sweden-haven-mafia-gangs.html