A coming wave of tit-for-tat bombings

A 16-year-old girl has been charged in Sweden for buying 12kg of explosives to blow up a corner shop, in one of the tit-for-tat gang wars that have given the country one of the highest rates of deadly shootings in Europe.

The girl has been charged alongside two men, aged 21 and 23, with planning and carrying out the attack in Malmo earlier this year. Prosecutors said her alleged involvement showed how gangs were using under-18s, who, if convicted of serious crime, typically spend only short stints in institutions.

Tomas Olvmyr, a prosecutor, said: “It is becoming more and more common that young people are used in serious crimes.”

A date for trial has not yet been set and none of the accused has admitted guilt.

An international comparison by the Swedish Council of Crime Prevention in May found that Sweden was the only country in Europe where fatal shootings have risen significantly since 2000.

The country has jumped from having one of the lowest rates of gun violence to one of the highest, with about four deaths per million inhabitants per year from shootings, compared with a European average of 1.6.

The majority of the perpetrators of gang shootings and bomb attacks in Sweden are young men with immigrant backgrounds, making violent crime a big political issue in the country.

Anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats and other Right-of-centre parties, have seized on attacks, blaming them on cultural factors.

However, Morgan Johansson, the justice minister from the Social Democrats, said on Facebook that he believed that “gaps in the welfare system and class differences [were] important explanations”.

Manne Gerell, a criminologist at Malmo University, warned of a coming wave of tit-for-tat bombings.

“Violence breeds violence, and in these types of criminal network environments, your respect, your brand, depends on you being dangerous,” he told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

“If someone does something to you, you need to respond with violence.”

Mr Olvmyr sees the attack for which the three have been charged as “most probably a revenge bombing” for one of the three earlier attacks.

According to the indictment, the May 23 explosion did more than pounds 4,000 worth of damage to the shop, damaged a nearby car, and left the shop’s owner suffering pain and impaired hearing.

Photo by Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency /REUTERS