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Denmark will strengthen its border controls with neighbouring Sweden after a surge in shootings in Copenhagen involving Swedish teenagers.
Peter Hummelgaard, Denmark’s justice minister, said on Friday that police would increase their inspections on trains across the iconic Øresund bridge linking the Danish capital with the southern Swedish city of Malmö and use more resources to monitor car traffic on the road crossing.
“We are increasing surveillance, in part to increase security, but also to prevent hired Swedish child soldiers who come to Copenhagen to carry out tasks in connection with gang conflicts,” he added.
Hummelgaard revealed on Thursday that there had been 25 incidents since April where Danish criminal gangs had hired what he called “child soldiers” to commit crimes in Denmark. In the last two weeks alone, Danish police have linked three shootings to Swedish teenagers.
Sweden has suffered from growing gang violence, turning it in the past decade from one of the countries in Europe with the lowest rate of fatal shootings to one of the highest.
Swedish police say that powerful criminal gangs often use children to commit murders as they will receive light sentences. Drug gangs — many of whom are led by second-generation immigrants now living outside the country — have infiltrated parts of the welfare, legal and political systems, meaning the fight against them could take decades, according to Swedish officials.
Hummelgaard called it “a scary phenomenon” that Danish gangs were hiring young Swedes to do “their dirty work”.
“There are people sitting as masterminds in the non-western world — in Lebanon, in Dubai, in Iraq — pulling the strings and starting conflicts with each other in Copenhagen. Quite simply, we don’t want to put up with that,” the Danish minister said.
Denmark has taken a tougher approach to immigration and criminal gangs than Sweden, leading to some rightwing politicians in Stockholm including in the government to suggest they should copy Copenhagen’s tactics. The measures have included forcibly moving non-Danes out of areas where they are in a majority as well as doubling punishment for crimes.
Denmark’s justice ministry said on Friday that it was deepening its intelligence co-operation with Sweden by stationing an officer permanently with Stockholm police as well as intensifying officer exchanges with law enforcement in southern Sweden. It is also looking into whether facial recognition technology can be used for very serious crimes such as attempted murder.
“Now we are tightening the screws further, also in the short term by strengthening efforts at the border with Sweden,” Hummelgaard added.
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