Swedish children are recruited daily by criminal networks on social media, and it is relatively common for minors to be assigned “murder assignments” via various chat groups, according to the police. Parents in Sweden are now being urged to get more involved and keep an eye on what their children are doing online.
– In the old days, you might have seen more of this classic thing in particularly vulnerable areas, where there was a square with an open drug scene and children were slowly being groomed for crime, explains Erik Lindblad, operational head of the police’s national work against organized crime, for state broadcaster Swedish Radio SR.
Today, however, it has largely moved to the Internet and social media, and ‘assignments’ are posted in various chat groups run by serious criminals.
– Now it can happen that children listen to a hip-hop artist or follow a certain rapper on social media, and through contacts made there they can enter an encrypted chat where murder assignments are posted more or less openly: ‘Can you go and shoot someone in Stockholm?
– Now it happens very actively and aggressively on a daily basis, he continues, and the police say that children are now recruited from all social classes and backgrounds, and that recruitment can happen very quickly.
Children have been murdered
Those who defect or refuse to accept an “assignment” from older criminals risk being subjected to threats and violence.
– It’s quite common for children to be threatened, because once they get the gun in their hands, they might think it’s not so much fun anymore, but by then it’s often too late and they’re forced to do it.
– We have seen children who have been very badly injured and even murdered for not doing what was expected of them.
He stresses that it is imperative for parents to monitor what their children are actually doing on social media.
– We have no adults or forces for good whatsoever in those rooms.
