"The boys were there and caught them," Adam says.

"I know who's behind it, but they're done. They're not here anymore."

He has resigned himself to a life of crime - too close are the bonds he has forged with his fellow gang members.

"Me personally, I will never leave," he says. "I don't see myself being in a gang, I see it like I'm in a family."

Soaring violence has led to calls for a tougher response.

"For the right amount of money they are willing to risk a life sentence"

Sweden's centre-right government has announced the country's first national strategy to combat organised crime - a raft of proposals aimed at crushing the gangs.

It's already debating legislation that would allow teenagers as young as 15 to be jailed.

In 2022, almost half the suspects in gun-related murders were aged between 15 and 20.

Adam doesn't think it will deter teenagers from picking up a gun.

"People here don't care about punishment. For the right amount of money, they are willing to risk a life sentence," he shrugs before walking off.

Adam's grim assessment is backed by the statistics.

Last year, 363 recorded shootings led to 53 deaths across Sweden, according to police.

In 2022, the gun murder rate in Stockholm was roughly 25 times higher than in London.

Sweden's gangs are out to kill - and there is no shortage of guns.

THE WEAPONS

In a warehouse on Uppsala's outskirts, a large table is laden with firearms.

Some would not look out of place in a museum, like the rusty, ancient revolvers or the Soviet-era submachine gun dating back to the Second World War.

Others are state-of-the-art, like the jet-black Glock 17 handgun that rests on the white tabletop.

They have one thing in common: all were confiscated in police raids, revealing the firepower of Sweden's criminal underworld.

"These are nothing else but tools, but tools in the wrong hands, in hands that are under the influence of drugs, people who are afraid - that makes a deadly cocktail. It's very, very dangerous," says Jale Poljarevius, chief of intelligence for Sweden's Mitt region.

This is not even the most impressive haul, says the police chief. A common find in police raids are AK-47 assault rifles, modern submachine guns, and even hand grenades. Most originate in the former Yugoslavia, where corrupt officials readily funnelled weapons into the black market after the end of the Cold War.

These weapons of war are not just used against gang members. With the attackers untrained and getting younger, innocent bystanders get caught up in the crossfire. Cases of mistaken identity are also common.

Tall and stern-faced, Mr Poljarevius cuts an imposing figure in his blue police uniform, which resembles military fatigues. A pistol is strapped to his thigh, he paces the room in combat boots. He's not one to mince his words.

Family members were once off limits - now they are considered fair game

Mr Poljarevius shows us a "job ad" placed on social media where gangs routinely advertise contract killings. On macabre job boards like this, information on the target can be scant.

"Go to a special area and kill someone with a Gucci cap," the ad reads.

Gucci baseball caps are common attire with gang members in Sweden. In its ganglands, wearing the wrong clothes is enough to get you killed. Life also carries a low value. Some jobs earn the killers as little as 60,000 Swedish krona (around £4,500), according to the police.

After years of fighting each other, rival gangs have abandoned some of the codes that limited the bloodshed.

Family members, once off limits, are now fair game. Parents, siblings and cousins are now in the crosshairs.

THE BOMBINGS

Increasingly, young gang members are turning to explosives to complement their arsenal: hand grenades from the Balkans, often given as a freebie with the purchase of an assault rifle; dynamite stolen from construction sites, or homemade bombs.

"It's easier to put explosives [somewhere] and then leave the place," says police superintendent Daniel Larsson in Uppsala.

"It's harder to shoot the person. So maybe in a way, it's easy to get youngsters into this type of crime."

"It was chaos because people were afraid"

Sitting at the wheel of a police command van, Mr Larsson drives us to a newly built residential area in Fullerro, a few miles out of Uppsala.

Here, a woman in her 20s died when an explosion ripped through a house last September.

"It was chaos because people were afraid. People were crying," Mr Larsson says. He likened it to a "war scene".

Police suspect the intended targets were relatives of Rawa Majid, a gang leader embroiled in a deadly feud with a former accomplice turned rival.

Majid, who heads the notorious Foxtrot gang, has fled Sweden for Turkey. He is rumoured to be either dead or to have moved on to Iran.

The blast took down two houses, another 57 were damaged. Months after the bombing, some are still being repaired.

It is not an isolated case. Last year, police recorded 149 explosions set off by criminals.

"Sweden should be a nice and calm country, but we are not calm anymore," the superintendent says.

Despite increased powers to stop, search and monitor gangs, police face an uphill battle to stamp out the violence which continues to spread.

Mr Larsson believes real progress will only be made if the root causes are addressed.

"Don't give the police the money," he says. "Give the schools the money, give social services the money."

IMMIGRATION

While gang violence has begun spreading to more affluent areas, it is deprived migrant communities that are bearing the brunt of the killings.

Sweden's previous pro-immigration stance meant it saw an influx of asylum seekers coming to the country, peaking in 2015.

Many of them ended up in suburbs, with second and third generation immigrants being brought up in satellite towns and council estates on the outskirts of Sweden's cities. With few economic prospects, social inequality is a fact of life here, hampering integration.

This makes young men vulnerable to gang recruitment. Statistics show that gang shooting suspects are predominantly of migrant background.

"They have been living rather isolated," says Principal Asa Beckman Malmberg, who teaches young offenders at a youth correctional facility.

"The parents don't trust the government. They don't trust the social services. They don't trust the police. So these kids have lived there all their lives, and they are struggling in the schools.

"So they just live their own lives outside [society] and the gangs pick them up."

THE VICTIMS

Mousa Chamoun was only 19 when he was killed in April 2022.

He had been hanging out with friends in a community hall and was on his way back for dinner when a car pulled up. Two figures emerged, drawing handguns. Seconds later, shots rang out and Mousa fell to the floor.

One of the gunmen was just 15 years old.

Mousa's sister Frida meets us in Norsborg, a short walk from the spot where her brother was gunned down.

The 23-year-old is softly spoken but gives long, thoughtful answers to questions about her brother's death. She is determined to tell his story.

Frida was studying for her exams at university on the day of Mousa's death. Her family rang with the news.

"I was completely devastated and really speechless," she says.

"It's unbelievable that a child has taken my brother in the most cold-blooded way and I can't get him back."

Frida has clips of her brother on her phone - one of Mousa listening to rap music with friends, another of him sitting on the bonnet of a car.

kleptocrats and democucks will disagree with this. the free market in action, baby, god bless america

Affable and carefree, he had planned to go to university and become a teacher like his sister. He never got involved with gangs - his killers were believed to be after someone else. A life cut short by a case of mistaken identity.

"A child has taken my brother in the most cold-blooded way"

The 15-year-old convicted over Mousa's murder was sentenced to just four years of juvenile detention, the maximum length of time permissible under existing laws. Gangs are exploiting this leniency toward young offenders by recruiting below the age of criminal responsibility.

Frida is incredulous that her brother's killer will walk free in two years' time.

She asks: "How can it be logical that someone who has taken someone else's life serves such a short sentence on the grounds of age?

"I believe in harsher penalties. We see that [recruitment] is increasing more and more among children and young people because the penalties are not tightened."

But even more than justice, she is seeking to prevent more young lives being extinguished by the senseless cycle of violence that has gripped Sweden. That is why she will not stop telling her brother's story.

On a visit to Mousa's final resting place, a graveyard set in the gently rolling fields and snowy forests outside Norsborg, Frida says her pupils often hug her after hearing about her brother's death.

"For me, that's everything. Because I know that I made them feel something," she says.

"I made them understand that everything you see on social media, on TV, in movies - that's not life. Maybe you live the high life for a short time and you enjoy it.

"But can you imagine yourself living with that fear the rest of your life, knowing that you have taken somebody else's life and they can come back to you and do the same to you?"

'STOP THE SHOOTING'

In Rinkeby on the outskirts of Stockholm, the winter chill keeps the streets empty on a Saturday night. An array of council blocks and social housing is broken up by a low-slung shopping mall around a small square. Not long ago this was the scene of unremitting gang warfare.

The cold has not kept Libaan Warsame indoors. Donning a bright red windbreaker, he is out on patrol, churning the icy snow under his soles as he tells his story.

Mr Warsame's 19-year-old son Hanad Libaan was killed in December 2020, at a time when violence in Rinkeby became so endemic that indiscriminate shootings became an almost weekly occurrence.

"My son went to the shopping centre and… two murderers, fully masked, came with electric scooters and opened fire on everyone," says Mr Warsame. "Three were injured, two seriously and one mildly, but my son could not be saved."

Reeling from the loss of his son, Mr Warsame felt that he could not cede the streets to the gangs. He founded Stop The Shooting, a group made up of parents who patrol the neighbourhood to engage with the youths they encounter.

Mr Warsame has a simple message to the kids he meets: "This is about their future and what we convey to them is that you should live. You don't have to be murdered when you're 17, 18, 19."

The number of shootings in the area has dropped significantly since Stop The Shooting began making its presence felt on Rinkeby's streets, Mr Warsame says.

But he concedes the lure of quick cash offered by gangs can be difficult to resist for young men with time on their hands.

"It's easy for them to be recruited because they don't have jobs, they have nothing to do," he says. "They are sitting at home, they are looking for work and it is hard to get."

As the government is still searching for answers, it's often left to the affected communities to stop the cycle of violence.

COMMUNITIES TAKING ACTION

As the ground around him turns red, Par Pluschke pushes his fingers deeper into the gaping hole in the fake arm in front of him.

"You have to find the artery, and apply pressure to stop the bleeding," he says.

His audience watches intently as he finally manages to stem the flow of fake blood.

This makeshift first aid workshop is organised by a volunteer group created by Mr Pluschke and a handful of friends in a bid to reduce deaths from gang shootings.

For Mr Pluschke, the project is personal. Two years earlier, he witnessed a shooting in Skarpnack, a quiet neighbourhood on the fringes of Stockholm.

He was sitting in a restaurant eating pizza when he heard the shots and quickly ran to the victim's body, lying motionless on the street.

"It would be hopeless if it was all up to the politicians"

Distraught that he could do nothing to save the life of the young man who bled out in front of his eyes, Mr Pluschke decided to take action. A week after the shooting, he held his first aid course.

Named Gatans Forband - loosely translated as Street Association - the group holds regular courses around Stockholm, using ad hoc venues to teach the basics of saving lives.

"What I'm really interested in is how we can build stronger, more resilient communities by taking care of each other. That's the really important thing," says Mr Pluschke.

The 46-year-old teacher always carries a tourniquet with him. With the government powerless to stop the shootings, Mr Pluschke believes it is time for civil society to step up.

"In every disaster, communities will arise spontaneously and help each other out. It would be hopeless if it was all up to the politicians."

We all know who is behind this

>Swedens murder rate is 9.7 per million pop.
>US murder rate is 42.01 per million pop.
WOOOOOOOOAAAAHHHHHH

Maybe just boot the brown people?

>>1284463
I wonder if it's interesting how that number scales with the black populations of both countries.
From this we can assume that the black population of Sweden is somewhere around
13/4 or 3.25%.
Let's see if I'm right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigrants_to_Sweden
>By 2022, this number rose to 250,881 residents of Sweden who were born in Africa, or approximately 3% of the total population.
Holy shit. There's a literal formula to detect how much murder importing blacks will cause.

>>1284466
>Maybe just boot the brown people?

No bigot scum.
Import ,more brown people to kill the brown people who kill.
Just kidding.
Sweden is a just a country, and has a good social safety security net, but this stuff still happens.
Why, you may ask?
No, not for that reason, you bigot scum.
It's all because of the haves and have nots system.
In the US, there's a big difference in the the haves and have nots so US murder rate is 42.01 per million pop.


In Sweden, there is less of a difference(Swedens murder rate is 9.7 per million pop.), but there is still a difference.
These upper middle classes drive their Audis to secure jobs every day, and the Black Swedes have to watch them, and all they get is food(no beef tenderloin for them) shelter(one bed room apartment for them) and health care(no travel to other countries to avoid waits for them) and so there still is resentment in the haves and have nots system of socialist capitalism.
The only fair system is Communism, where everyone one lives like the black Swedes, only slighly better(except for a small minority of the Communist nomenklatura).

>>1284472
i dont think its black people exactly.. I think they are dregging up any fuckhead from 3rd world countrys to fuck shit up and lo and behold.. most rich countries are pale peoples... Every person from africa ive ever met was nice and polite af.. I dont think its a skin issue but a skill at civilization issue.

>>1284477
Everything you said is hot air..
The Swedes arent causing this problem.
This problem has been set upon Sweden.
Tolerance is as tolerance does son.

>>1284479
>Not all black people
>Muh socioeconomic factors

>>1284544
I'M OUTRAGED!1 THEY OUGHT TO APOLOGIZE!11

N

>>1284546
This but unironically.
Lefties are shitting up western civilization because they think all humans are inherently equal.

>>1284447
>>1284463
Isn't Sweden still like 95% White? Lol, Europe has no idea what it's getting into with the refugee crisis. Wait 20 years and Stockholm will be as bad as US Democrat-run cities.
Import the third-world, become the third world.

>>1284827
Stockholm is not 95% white anymore
around 27% of people in Stockholm are immigrants
some are white, the others are not

>>1284827
You obviously skipped over this post: >>1284472
It's not going to be long until they're worse than the US at this rate.

YES SWEDEN! YES!