A 12-year-old child has been detained in Sweden for allegedly killing the wrong person after being paid £20,000 to carry out an assassination.
It comes after a 21-year-old man was murdered in a car in Malmö, southern Sweden, on December 12.
According to Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet, the alleged child assassin shot the man by mistake, meaning to target someone else in the vehicle.
The fatal shooting occurred when the 21-year-old and his friends were travelling in an Audi along Galgebacksvägen in Oxie, at around 10.30pm.
Police received reports about the shooting at around 11pm and the victim – sitting in the back seat – was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after.
Following a murder investigation, police identified a 12-year-old as their prime suspect, according to a report in Sydsvenskan, and took him into custody on Tuesday.
Because he is below the age of legal responsibility, he has been taken into care.
However, prosecutor Caroline Carlquist has decided to initiate proceedings against the minor in these circumstances, because of the severity of the alleged crime.
The suspect, from central Sweden, has allegedly been given several assassination assignments and was promised £20,000 for this particular murder, Expressen claimed.
The suspect previously lived with his grandmother and was placed there by social services when he was seven years old, according to the court.
He has been the subject of multiple investigations, primarily regarding concerns about his parents’ behaviour, including alleged instances of violence and abuse.
He is apparently the youngest person to be suspected of committing a fatal shooting in Sweden to date, according to local media.
‘I am not aware of any completed murder with such a young suspect,’ Manne Gerell, associate professor of criminology, told Sydsvenskan.
Rasem Chebil, responsible for the investigation at Malmö Police, expressed concern that an increasing number of perpetrators of violent crime are minors.
‘We see that it is creeping down in age. We have had some very young perpetrators, especially in acts with hand grenades… Then you think about how it could have become like this, and how we can stop this development,’ he said.
Chebil blamed social media for the rise in teenage and child assassins in Sweden, suggesting that young people get scouted on their mobile phones by strangers looking to take advantage of them.
‘But before you know it, you’re in the clutches of those who recruit you for serious acts of violence,’ he said.
‘Often these young people believe that their families will suffer if they don’t carry out the tasks.’
Following the shooting, the fellow passengers drove into the city centre and parked the car on a residential street in Hindby, before abandoning the vehicle.
They then contacted another person, who was assigned to alert the police that the 21-year-old had been shot.
Across Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, Sweden stands out for having the highest prevalence of youth street gang involvement, according to the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU).
In 2022, 73 Swedish youths aged between 15 and 20 were suspected of murder or attempted murder with firearms, a sharp increase from just 10 a decade earlier.
In 2023, Reuters claimed that 55 people were fatally shot in 363 separate shootings in Sweden, a country of just 10.6 million people.
In contrast, only six fatal shootings occurred across Norway, Finland, and Denmark combined during the same period.
Evin Cetin, an author of a book on youth gangs and a former Swedish lawyer, argued that minors are recruited as assassins because of the assumption that they aren’t on the police’s radar.
Many of the children started with petty drug dealing aged 12 or 13 before working as contract killers.
‘They are child soldiers,’ she told the Telegraph, drawing comparisons to ISIS and the Lord’s Resistance Army in parts of Africa.
‘They are getting used by older people who manipulate them. They are doing it with drugs, they are isolating them from society. It’s really easy to control children – and it is scary how fast they can actually do it.’
