Denmark and Sweden vow to hunt down gang leaders who hire minors to kill from abroad

The Danish and Swedish justice ministers vowed Wednesday to go after organized crime leaders abroad, whom they say have been hiring teenagers in Sweden to carry out deadly shootings in Denmark.

Denmark’s Peter Hummelgaard has said that gangs have hired young Swedes to commit crimes in Denmark at least 25 times since April, in part because Swedish law imposes lighter penalties for minors who commit serious crimes.

“Several of the people who orchestrate this reckless and violent crime are hiding under warmer skies, and of course this is completely unacceptable,” Hummelgaard told a press conference Wednesday after a meeting with his Swedish counterpart Gunnar Strömmer in Copenhagen. He said they were “often in the greater Middle East” but didn’t name any specific country.

One of Sweden’s two major gangs is led by a Swedish-Turkish dual national who lives in Turkey, which refuses to extradite its own citizens.