Sweden is turning to its military to curb violent crime that has soared alongside immigrant gang activity across the country.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced on Friday that he planned to ask the country’s military to step in and aid police in combatting surging shootings and bomb attacks. The prime minister also said he would look into legislation that would give the military greater authority to engage in police activities, according to the Financial Times.
The prime minister’s announcement followed remarks he made the day before condemning the surge in violence and saying that Sweden’s immigration policies are largely to blame. Police officials in the Scandinavian country have said the security situation in Sweden is the worst it has been since World War II.
“I cannot emphasize enough how serious the situation is. Sweden has never seen anything like it before. No other country in Europe sees anything like it currently,” Kristersson said Thursday night, according to FT.
“It is political naivete and cluelessness that has brought us here,” he continued. “It is an irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration effort that has brought us here.”
Criminal gangs in Sweden have preyed upon children and teens, enticing or forcing them to commit crimes because the penalties against underage criminals are less severe than against adults.
“Social exclusion and parallel societies feed the criminal gangs. There they can ruthlessly recruit children and train them as future killers,” Kristersson said.
The effort to involve the military in curbing gang violence appears to have drawn support across the political spectrum in Sweden. Before Kristersson, a center-right politician, Sweden’s former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, who is center-left and in the opposition, said Thursday that the military should be leveraged against the gangs.
“Surveillance performed by police officers could be carried out by the military. In addition, there is technical know-how with the military that they could assist with,” the former prime minister said. Her comments came after a violent 24 hours in which three people were killed in shootings and bombings.
Earlier in the week, two explosions ripped through buildings in a suburb of Sweden’s capital and Linkoping, 110 miles southwest. The bombs injured at least three people. A Swedish newspaper reported that both explosions are suspected of being connected to gang activity.
National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg said last month that violence across Sweden has reached an “unprecedented scale.”
“Several boys aged between 13 and 15 have been killed, the mother of a criminal was executed at home, and a young man in Uppsala was shot dead on his way to work,” Thornberg said. “Citizens are afraid, insecurity is increasing. And this at a time when we have raised our terrorist alert level in the country.”