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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In a quiet little town in northern France, an improbable sequence of events takes place which will go on to transform completely the struggle against organised crime in Europe. It all starts when the French cybercrime police hacks into an encrypted service called Encrochat: suddenly anonymity crumbles and murder contracts and drug deals become visible on the screen. Police are able to follow communications between drug couriers, gang leaders, and teenage hitmen in real time.
To save lives, the police must respond quickly, but must also be careful not to reveal that they’re listening in. As unexpected arrests of criminals grow increasingly frequent, criminal networks come into view, with nodes dotted all across Europe, all prepared to do whatever it takes to gain control of the drug trade. One name in particular will come to haunt the investigators: the Kurdish Fox, a notorious gang leader with ambitions to become the Pablo Escobar of Scandinavia.
Diamant Salihu’s gripping story lifts the veil on a shadowy underworld swathed in secrecy but responsible for some of today’s most violent crimes.
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Seitenzahl: 502
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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CONTENTS
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Quote
Preface to the English Edition
Main Characters
Police officers/lawyers
Malmö/Skåne
The Stockholm area
Rest of Sweden
Overseas
Prologue
Part 1: Pandora’s Box: February 2020 – April 2020
1
2
3
4
5
6
Part 2: The Chain: March 2020
7
8
9
Part 3: D-Day: May 2020 – June 2020
10
11
12
13
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Part 4: Foxtrot: March 2020 – August 2020
17
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19
20
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22
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24
Part 6: The Fox Hunt: September 2021 – December 2022
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37
38
39
40
41
42
Part 7: When No One Listens: January 2023 – March 2023
43
44
45
46
47
48
Afterword
Thanks
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Quote
Preface to the English Edition
Main Characters
Prologue
Begin Reading
Afterword
Thanks
End User License Agreement
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WHEN NOBODY’S LISTENING
Inside Sweden’s Drug Gangs
DIAMANT SALIHU
Translated by Jan Salomonsson
polity
Originally published in Swedish as När ingen lyssnar. Copyright © Mondial and Diamant Salihu, 2023. Published by agreement with Mondial
This English translation © Polity Press, 2025
The cost of this translation was supported by a subsidy from the Swedish Arts Council, gratefully acknowledged.
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6464-4
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024947775
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com
You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.
– Lester Freamon, The Wire
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
At the time of writing, a year has passed since this book was originally published in Swedish, and I’ve long since lost count of all the children who have been systematically exploited to carry out bombings and shootings. When I went on parental leave, I kept in touch with gang members and family members of victims on my phone during visits to playgrounds. One of the people I was in contact with was a grandfather called Ömer. His son had been shot dead in his home in the south of Stockholm. According to sources in the criminal underworld, the victim’s son, Ömer’s grandson, had been accused of shooting at Rawa Majid’s relatives in Uppsala, and the murder was an act of retribution. When I met with Ömer later on, he was beside himself with grief. He told me how his family had worked hard to earn an honest living since leaving Turkey four decades ago.
‘My son had a good life here’, he said, with tired eyes. ‘What’s happening in Sweden right now is more than just a conflict between gangs. It’s terrorism.’
The charges against Ömer’s grandson and his suspected accomplices were eventually dropped.
Another parent I spoke to told me about how she had tried to convince the local social services to take her son into care, but that they had determined that he wasn’t sufficiently involved in criminal activity for such a measure to be taken. The police barely knew who he was. His mother, however, had seen how quickly things were heading in the wrong direction. He had suddenly begun to spend a great deal of time with some new friends, and he was very evasive in responding to her anxious calls and messages. One day, the police stormed their house. Her anxiety grew into a panic when she realized that her son was being arrested on suspicion of murder.
After participating in a panel discussion on recent developments in Swedish society in a crowded church, I was approached by a grandmother who told me how she’d been babysitting her daughter’s baby when some youths fired a hail of bullets at her front door.
During an onstage interview at the Gothenburg Book Fair in the autumn of 2023, I stressed the point that the criminals I speak to don’t usually blame society or their parents. Rather, they tend to insist that they actively chose their lifestyle. I told the audience about a girl I’d met, who went to university and had gone on to serve on various boards, while her brother had been convicted of murder and handed a life sentence.
‘We had the same opportunities. But when we reached a certain crossroads in life, and I went right, he went left’, the sister had told me.
I noticed a woman at the back of the crowd, who had clearly been moved by this. During the book-signing after the interview, that woman was in the line, accompanied by a young woman, her daughter. They both burst into tears when we met. The story I had just told onstage had resonated deeply within them. The woman’s daughter was pursuing a degree in public health sciences, but her brother was an alleged gang leader who was currently serving a long prison sentence. When they told me that her convicted brother’s young son had pointed and said that ‘That’s where daddy lives’, when they passed by the police station one day, I found myself overcome by emotion, too.
The mother had tried, as parents in her situation often do, to figure out what had gone wrong and what she might have done differently.
Later, lying on the bed in my hotel room, I called a therapist who specializes in helping criminals change their lives and deal with their trauma. My reason for calling was that I had recently come into contact with young women who had been victimized by male gang members and gang-raped. It immediately dawned on me that, being a journalist, I was unable to take on the role of their therapist. Instead, they needed somebody who had experience of giving long-term treatment to trauma and PTSD sufferers.
The therapist could hear how tired and exhausted I was over the phone, and before he answered my questions, he asked me one, instead: ‘What about you, Diamant? Who are you talking to about all this stuff?’
*
When I first began working on When Nobody’s Listening, Rawa Majid – the Kurdish Fox – was virtually unknown in Sweden. By the time I was finalizing the book, he was everywhere. His name and picture were in all the newspapers, alongside articles declaring him to be a notorious Swedish drug lord who sent children out to commit acts of violence in the name of the Foxtrot network. This was in the spring of 2023, when the first of two major waves of violence that year was in full swing. I had to update the book constantly, right up until I submitted the manuscript for publication, as new, highly publicized acts of drug- and honour-fuelled violence were being committed every day. The Foxtrot network was at war with the Dalen network, and the situation seemed to escalate with every bombing, every shooting and every victimized participant or innocent bystander.
Things would soon grow even worse, as even more lines were crossed. That autumn, the second wave of violence of 2023 began and, this time, the conflict was an internal one. Ismail Abdo – also known as the Strawberry – was on one side. His mother was shot dead with a single bullet in her home in Gränby, Uppsala. Her son hails from a family of entrepreneurs, but ended up pursuing a criminal career in the drug trafficking business. He allied himself with Rawa Majid, who also came from Uppsala. However, their loyalties had begun to unravel several months earlier. I’ve received various accounts of why this happened from sources who had previously been members of the network’s inner circle. Rawa Majid had become a megalomaniac, and was ordering an unreasonable number of killings in his highly publicized conflict with the Dalen network during the spring of 2023.
Some sources told me that the turning point for many had been when family members on both sides became targets in the conflict. Others accused Rawa Majid of having claimed too large a portion of the profits from drug trafficking, which was his network’s main source of income. By committing acts of violence and offering guaranteed drug deliveries, Foxtrot had managed to gain influence in many Swedish cities, from north to south, as well as to establish varying degrees of presence in both Norway and Finland. Anybody who was allied with Foxtrot was allowed to sell the drugs the network delivered in their name, enjoying their protection. Anybody who opposed them might end up being the next in line to be murdered. This threat was levelled at rival criminals and their family members alike.
Now, though, a war had erupted within the network. Its leaders had long resided in Turkey, where many of them felt sufficiently secure to settle in the luxurious Maslak neighbourhood in northern Istanbul. Rawa Majid was living there with his family, and had also bought a house just a stone’s throw from the sea in the coastal town of Bodrum. This property had cost him more than 20 million kronor, according to Foxtrot members.
Allegedly, he borrowed some of the money from his contact within the unofficial banking network known as Hawala, which operates internationally. This individual, who was actually an Arabic-speaking man, used the alias ‘Jenny’ in encrypted chats.
Mention of money changers like this individual became increasingly common during that dark autumn. During September 2023 alone, twelve people were killed, two of whom weren’t even indirectly involved in the conflict.
Foxtrot, like other gangs, had come to depend on Hawala bankers, who took a percentage for processing the gangs’ criminal proceeds from drug sales and fraud. In other words, the gangs’ practice of using money changers who operated bureaux de change offices had been discontinued after it was uncovered during the police operation that followed the hacking of the secret Encrochat communications network. Instead, individuals who used the informal Hawala banking system were helping the gangs transfer their funds to countries such as Turkey, the Netherlands, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. The whole procedure was completely anonymous, and didn’t involve any digital transactions at all. Once they had been handed the cash, it was entirely up to the money changers and their partners to decide how to handle and launder the money.
The money changers were paid to accept the risk of the money being seized. However, there were so many millions being moved around every day that any such loss would be quickly recouped thanks to the fees the gangs were paying. Long before the internal strife began, Foxtrot had also begun to suffer the consequences of a series of successful police operations leading to major drug seizures. The gang had used credits offered by ‘Jenny’ and other money changers to buy a lot of the drugs that were seized. A well-organized criminal network would have managed to quickly repay these debts, but as the internal rivalries intensified and the justice system achieved more successes, the debt held by Rawa Majid alone is alleged to have grown to tens of millions of kronor.
The police were also growing more effective in combatting the gangs.
The Swedish Police Authority had expanded its operations, and called in extra staff to the regions where there had been a particular uptick in violent crime. Since many of those recruited to perpetrate the violence were children who had never held a gun or planted a bomb before, they made a lot of mistakes, too. Besides accidentally bombing or shooting the wrong targets, they left a tremendous amount of evidence behind: DNA and gunpowder residue on clothes that they never had time to burn; video clips in which they filmed themselves committing murders and attempted murders. The police’s ‘blue wave’ of extra personnel produced a large number of arrested suspects, both girls and boys. A record number of these were minors who had been caught redhanded with murder weapons and unlocked phones in their possession. Often, the Signal app on these phones would be full of plans for crimes, and orders given in voicemails from leaders who were in hiding abroad.
*
When even the most influential Foxtrot members began to evacuate their families from their known addresses – as they had become targets in the blood feud that was sparked by the murder of Ismail Abdo’s mother – these former friends began to hunt each other in Turkey and Iraq, instead.
Rawa Majid’s time in Turkey came to an abrupt end when he was forced to flee the country. A few days after he escaped, information began to pour in from sources within both the rival factions. Rawa Majid had been detained in Iran, which he had entered with a false ID. This information reached both the Swedish police and the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, who announced it during a televised party leaders’ debate.
Since then, Rawa Majid has been silent. Strangely, Iran, which could plausibly be expected to seek to use him as a bargaining chip to secure a prisoner exchange, has not confirmed his arrest at the time of writing. Despite the uncertainty surrounding his fate, several independent sources have long maintained that the internationally wanted Rawa Majid is, in all likelihood, in Iran. In an interview in Aftonbladet, his father also stated that his son had been arrested in Iran, and that he had been released during the spring of 2024.
One of the people who claimed to have helped the Fox get to Iran was Mustafa Aljiburi, or ‘Benzema’, as he called himself – a reference to the former Real Madrid footballer. This former friend and ally of the Fox, who was a member of Foxtrot, had started an Instagram war against the Ismail Abdo faction – while also mocking and distancing himself from the network’s absent leader, Rawa Majid.
In front of thousands of social media followers, he presented himself as a new gang leader with huge ambitions. He declared that his goal was to unite all the criminal networks in Sweden, and share the profits fairly so ‘everyone can eat’. Even more significant was his claim that he wouldn’t tolerate acts of violence against family members, which had previously been a common practice in Foxtrot. He was media-savvy, and maintained communications with several journalists, including myself. He wanted me to interview him, preferably in a live broadcast. I explained that I am a journalist, not a ‘gangland influencer’. The latter term was a reference to the various accounts that gave completely unfiltered and uncritical reports on the activities of Swedish criminals.
Before our first conversation, which had taken place earlier that autumn, Mustafa Aljiburi had been told that his rivals had offered a million-dollar reward for his murder. However, he managed to turn the hitman they’d hired over to his side, and cooperated with him to fake his own death. The people who had ordered the hit were sent pictures in which Aljiburi appeared to have been abducted, and then a video of him, bloodied, sitting in a car with the engine running. His allies in the Bro network posted social media posts with pictures of him and the letters ‘RIP’, to convince his enemies and us journalists that the murder had actually been carried out. This ruse did successfully deceive many people, but, fortunately, no mainstream media channels took the bait. Instead of publishing the story, they all awaited confirmation from the Iraqi authorities or Swedish police. That confirmation never came.
Allegedly, after faking his own death, Mustafa Aljiburi even sent couriers to collect the money his enemies had put up for the hit, paid out in dollars by various Hawala-connected money changers in Iraq. Among other things, he’s said to have spent this money on a new black Mercedes, but it was also allegedly used to buy drugs and pay for crimes ordered in Sweden. He presented himself in two very different ways. On the one hand, he claimed to be opposed to acts of violence targeting family members. On the other hand, he didn’t think twice about threatening to kill opposing gang members in Upplands Väsby and Västerås if they resisted his army of soldiers. This army largely consisted of children and young adults who had been recruited by a team of young allies who had joined his new faction. Many of these children, who came from a great variety of towns and backgrounds, were arrested by the police when they were armed and ready to kill people who had sided with Ismail Abdo. One thing many of them had in common was that their recruitment had taken place through social media, often initiated by a simple invitation: ‘Write to me if you want to work.’
Vulnerable children, some of whom were living in residential centres at the time, responded to this request. They knew exactly what it meant. They were directed on to a Signal Chat where a job interview of sorts might be conducted by a masked teenager of their own age. This individual had never met Mustafa Aljiburi in person, but had reached out to him simply because he believed that his side was the right one to join in the ongoing gang war. The teenage recruiter looked up to him like an older brother, and Mustafa Aljiburi was very good at pulling his strings with praise. As a result, the boy’s loyalty to him strengthened even further.
The teenager asked the new recruits if they were absolutely sure they wanted to carry out the shootings.
‘Yes, bro, I’m ready’, he might be told.
He instructed them to go and stay in specific flats, which they shared with others who had responded to the same message. The people in this murder squad were called klivare, or ‘steppers’ – because they were prepared to step up. They were added to Signal groups in which the recruiter and the leader could give them instructions in group chats.
Another individual who was in contact with these child soldiers claims that recruiting them hadn’t taken any effort at all. They had volunteered, without even asking for payment, because they wanted to ‘make a name for themselves’.
‘They’re morons’, this gang member said.
Some of the children had never used a weapon before, and it was necessary to explain how the weapon they were to use for the murder worked before their missions. After this training, the klivare were sent into enemy territory to carry out their tasks. They might be instructed to make video calls, so that one of the leaders could identify their targets in real time, and give them quick orders: ‘There, there! Shoot the people in front of you!’
In one such attempted shooting in Upplands Väsby, it’s alleged that two inexperienced klivare panicked, and ended up being shot at themselves, before escaping unharmed.
Death lists were drawn up with names of people tied to various groups, all of whom were considered legitimate targets. This means that the task of the recruiters, some of whom were children themselves, was to order other children to kill specific individuals. One person likened the whole process to a computer game, and explained that the fact that the shot callers were abroad made it easier for them to issue life-and-death orders, as they never had to look either the perpetrators or the victims in the eyes.
Neither the klivare, who had been recruited directly from residential centres, nor the recruiters ever knew exactly what it was their targets were supposedly guilty of. All they knew was that they were legitimate targets, as they had been declared enemies. The question of whether a certain target was actually guilty of any offence, or really belonged to an enemy network, was settled as soon as Mustafa Aljiburi or someone else at the top of the organization said so.
My long conversations with people who had deep involvement in these events painted a frightening picture. It revealed how older criminals were manipulating vulnerable children who were desperate for a sense of belonging.
In the months since Mustafa Aljiburi had appointed himself the new leader of Swedish organized crime, he watched on as his allies were arrested in Tunisia, Iraq and Norway, from what seemed to be an increasing state of isolation in his home town of Baghdad. A friend of his, Harris Österdahl, who had also been a leading member of the Foxtrot network, was soon shot dead in Sarajevo by klivare sent there from Sweden.
During a series of conversations with Benzema, plans were made to interview him in Iraq. The interview, which was to be about the money changers, would be made for Uppdrag granskning, an investigative-reporting television show that I work for. This trip never happened. In early January, Benzema was slowly driving along a multi-lane, busy street in Baghdad in his Mercedes. A shooter, a nineteen-year-old from Hudiksvall, approached his car from the right. A large number of shots were fired through the passenger window, several of which hit Benzema in the head.
The shooter and his accomplices were arrested soon thereafter, and are now facing a potential death penalty in Iraq. One of the nineteen-year-old’s fellow prisoners in Baghdad claims that he was offered 1.5 million kronor to carry out the murder by a contact in Malmö. After accepting, he received assistance from people on the ground in Baghdad, who had been watching Benzema and secured weapons for the hit.
I’ve received accounts from inside his cell, which he shared with many other prisoners, of torture and exceptionally harsh treatment of those suspected of involvement in the murder. According to reports, the nineteen-year-old was apparently on a group call with ten or so members of various networks in Sweden at the time of Benzema’s shooting. These individuals were allegedly involved in the murder plot and all chipped in to raise the fee to have it carried out.
I was told by the person who claims to have spoken to the nineteen-year-old in prison that ‘They wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be deceived again.’ Another person involved was allegedly paid 100,000 kronor to video the murder from a car behind. The footage went viral immediately after Benzema was killed.
His enemies celebrated on social media – most notably, a happy picture of Ismail Abdo and two close allies was posted. Both Mustafa Aljiburi and his friend Harris Österdahl had been killed. According to the indictment that was filed in mid-February 2024, the two had been in contact with the young recruited hitmen, aged fifteen and nineteen, who were suspected of having murdered Ismail Abdo’s mother. The teenagers, however, deny all wrongdoing.
*
According to sources in the criminal underworld, Rawa Majid remains a target in the blood feud triggered by that murder. The final reckoning is likely to come eventually, in some foreign country, unless the two sides somehow manage to arrive at a reconciliation.
But ‘That’s never going to happen’, according to an ally of Ismail Abdo.
At first, there were some on his side who had their doubts that Rawa Majid had actually been involved in the murder of Abdo’s mother. Had he really been prepared to cross that line, which most criminals keep well clear of? The court case that followed the charges made couldn’t provide a definitive answer, as the investigation never managed to tie Rawa Majid to the murder. Several Signal aliases that communicated with the shooters remain unidentified, including the alias Killerforce, which gave a series of instructions to the recruited shooters. Among other things, this alias provided them with an address where they were supposed to meet. After the murder, Killerforce arranged for one of the shooters to be sent 1,000 kronor so he could buy pizza. Moments later, Killerforce asked the fifteen-year-old who was later charged with the murder if he was absolutely sure the woman had died.
‘Yes, brother, we’re one hundred per cent sure’, the boy replied.
‘Ok bro’, Killerforce wrote back.
Former allies of Rawa Majid claim that some of the aliases mentioned in the investigation are ones they believe he was using at the time. Two independent sources from what was once the Foxtrot network have told me this. However, the police and the prosecutors have so far been unable to verify this.
Many have also suggested to me that, while the blood feud united various rival criminal groups against Rawa Majid and Mustafa Aljiburi, everybody is expected to go back to focusing on their own interests as they did before. However, members of some organizations have expressed the hope that everybody will realize that they have nothing to gain from more blood being spilled, particularly when it’s family members and innocent bystanders who end up getting hurt. Meanwhile, our prisons are overcrowded, our legislation is constantly being tightened to allow law enforcement to reach both the recruiters and the hitmen and we’re seeing new laws being proposed to facilitate the pursuit of the enablers such as the Hawala money changers, who manage and launder illicit proceeds, including profits made from drug crimes and fraud.
That’s where we are now. When Nobody’s Listening is the story of how we got here.
Diamant SalihuJune 2024
MAIN CHARACTERS
Police officers/lawyers
Putte. Intelligence officer at the Department of National Operations (Noa) and Europol during the encrypted chat operations.
Cattis. Lead intelligence officer at Noa.
Emil Eisersjö. Operational manager of Noa’s intelligence department during the encrypted chat operations.
Linda H. Staaf. Head of intelligence at Noa during the encrypted chat operations.
Solveig Wollstad. Sweden’s representative at the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, Eurojust, during the encrypted chat operations.
Lise Tamm. Chief prosecutor at the National Unit against Organized Crime (Rio) when Sweden gained access to the encrypted chats.
Henrik Söderman. Prosecutor at Rio and Noa’s contact during the encrypted chat operations.
Ted Esplund. Section head at the intelligence department in the Bergslagen region. Later, national project manager for the encrypted chat operations.
Stefan Olofsson. Head of police operations in the South region during Operation Rimfrost.
Erik Åberg. Deputy local police district commander in the South region.
Patrik Andersson. Section head of the regional intelligence service in the South region – one of the few people to be given early knowledge of the Encro operation.
Richard. Detective in the South region.
Helena Ljunggren. Public prosecutor at Rio in Malmö.
TEAM FOXTROT
Jacob. Team leader at the Serious Crime Department in the North Stockholm police district. Lead investigator on the attempted murder in Viksjö and the hunt for the Fox and his network.
Denny. Head of a team of detectives in the Järva local police district.
Erik. A detective colleague of Denny’s.
Thorbjörn. A response officer who joined the hunt for the Fox and his network as a detective.
Niklas. A response officer who joined the hunt for the Fox and his network as a detective.
Patrik Zanders. Lead investigator on the case of the murder of Shad, the Fox’s cousin. Worked at Noa on the encrypted chat operations.
Vera. Noa’s liaison officer at Europol when Encrochat was cracked. Coordinated the Trojan Shield operation with the FBI.
Stefan Reimer. Justice of the Supreme Court.
Lisa dos Santos. Prosecutor in the Årstabron Bridge murder case against Abdul, Toj and Kevin.
Anders Rissel. Chief of police in the North Stockholm police district.
Lisa Granqvist. Head of the Serious Crimes Department in the North police district.
Martina. Police officer who previously worked in Rinkeby, now working in Norrköping.
Christoffer Bohman. Coordinator of the encrypted chat operations in the North Stockholm police district during the autumn of 2021.
Thomas Olsson. Lawyer who criticized the use of encrypted chats as evidence, and questioned the legality of how the evidence was provided to Swedish police.
Ester Herlin-Karnell. Professor of EU Law at the University of Gothenburg. Specializes in EU criminal law.
Marie Lind Thomsen. Senior prosecutor at Rio during the encrypted chat operations.
Magnus Sjöberg. Head of the National Tactical Council at Noa.
Malmö/Skåne
The Boxer. Leading criminal in Malmö, real name Amir Mekky. Used the alias Airwalnut on Encrochat, according to the police. Thought to be a leading figure in Los Suecos.
Salle. A criminal in Skåne. Loyal to the Boxer, and thus an enemy of Danni. Encountered Danni at the hotel in Ängelholm.
Danni. A leading criminal in Malmö and enemy of the Boxer ever since his brother was kidnapped in 2018. Used the alias Waterbee on Encrochat, according to the police. Encountered his rival Salle at the hotel in Ängelholm.
Niff. Had ties to the criminal underworld of Malmö. An ally of Danni. Used the alias Stiffherb on Encrochat, according to the police. Cohabited with intern physician Karolin Hakim.
Karolin Hakim. Intern physician murdered in 2019. Had a child with Niff.
Sadking. Criminal from Malmö. Loyal to Danni. Communicated with Ftpftp from the Jakobsberg network in Stockholm.
Juggen. Young man in Malmö who brokered services between criminals. Has been linked to the alias Valuedox on Encrochat.
Kitekiller. The Encrochat alias of a young man who committed crimes for pay. Was involved in the murder plot against Salle at the hotel in Ängelholm.
Haraketamal. Encrochat alias with ties to Skåne’s criminal underworld. Loyal to Danni. Participated in the assassination plot against Salle.
Atte. 41-year-old from Helsingborg who was murdered when the preliminary investigation against his brother was made public.
The Stockholm area
Maykil Yokhanna. From Vårby. Has been identified as the leader of a criminal group. Enemy of the Vårby network after several years of conflict.
Orhan. Suspected of involvement in the murder of Adriana. Currently avoiding prosecution in Turkey.
Chihab Lamouri. Leader of the Vårby network and an enemy of Maykil. Used the alias Mujaheed on Encrochat, according to the police.
The Captain. One of Lamouri’s ‘captains’ within the Vårby network. Helped plan the assassination plot against Maykil.
THE CHAIN
Donvar. Drug distributor in Stockholm.
Sara. Girl in her twenties who sold drugs in Stockholm.
Maja. Social worker who had been using drugs recreationally for years.
Rolex man. Encrochat alias that was involved in planning the attempted murder in Viksjö.
Ftpftp. Encrochat alias that was involved in planning the attempted murder in Viksjö. Connected to the Jakobsberg network. Also in contact with Sadking.
The Fish. Involved in the murder plot in Viksjö. Has been linked to the Headshot Gang.
The 16-year-old. Young individual from Rinkeby who carried out the attempted murder in Viksjö. Reportedly, his services were brokered by a senior member of the Death Squad.
Peter. The victim of the attempted murder at the bus stop in Viksjö.
The Money Changer. Operated the World Exchange in Södermalm. Has been connected to the Encrochat alias Muteherder.
Shad. Cousin of the Fox, friend of the Death Squad and, according to the police, a leading member of the Headshot Gang. Murdered in 2018.
The Mask. Thought to be vengeful and a loner. Was accused of involvement in the murder of Shad.
The Death Squad Leader. Man from the Järva area, who is serving a long prison sentence at Kumla. Accused of involvement in a murder plot against the Mask.
Leopardmaster. Encrochat alias used by a man from the Järva area who is said to have been involved in raising money to have the Mask murdered.
Berno Khouri. Leader of the Södertälje network who has been sentenced to life in prison. Has been accused of involvement in a murder plot against the Mask.
Ekrem Güngör. Former lawyer who was referred to as the King and has been tied to the Encrochat alias Literalbeetle.
Amir Amdouni. Former lawyer who was referred to as the Prince and has been tied to the Encrochat alias Literalbeetle.
THE FOX AND SUSPECTED AFFILIATES
The Fox. Leader of extensive drug networks. Rose to notoriety under the name ‘The Kurdish Fox’. Thirty-six years of age, real name is Rawa Majid. The police have linked him to the aliases Foxkurdish, Foxplanet and Animal.
Albin. Mule who worked for the Fox and was arrested at the Elite Hotel in April 2020. Used the alias Buckradio on Encrochat, according to the police.
Roger. Small-business owner from Ekerö who worked for the Fox as a mule, and delivered drugs in Sollentuna to Mesut.
Mesut. A man from Sollentuna who received a drug delivery there from Roger.
Wilhelm. A man from Åkersberga who worked for the Fox as a mule, and drove cargo to an industrial area in Vallentuna.
Darthvvader. Encrochat alias used by an individual who held a significant position within the Fox’s network.
The Coach. Suspected of being the Fox’s logistics manager in Sweden. Organized transportation of drug shipments to stash locations using freight companies.
Rodrigo. Holder who worked for the Fox. Kept a stash of drugs in a hotel room in central Stockholm, and took a taxi to Märsta.
Jerker. Major drug dealer who made the delivery in Märsta.
Oliver. Man from Årsta who worked as a mule for the Fox, and made the delivery by the train station in Bro.
Lars. Gave Oliver missions to perform. Used the Encro alias SAS.
The Blacksmith. A father of young children from southern Stockholm. Was in business with the Fox.
Teemu. Finnish citizen and leader of a criminal network in his home country.
Robin. Construction entrepreneur and former Foreign Legionnaire. Bought drugs from Rivkin and engaged in drug deals with the Blacksmith.
Kent. Construction worker and mule who worked for Robin. Received drugs from Oliver in Bro.
The Fox’s mother. The mother of the Fox. Lives in Uppsala.
The Fox’s father. Father of the Fox and brother of Shad’s mother.
Hasse. Friend of the Fox’s family. Used to be in a relationship with the Fox’s mother.
The Pensioner. Volunteered at the Fox’s family’s ice cream parlour in Uppsala.
Abdul Haleem. Leader of a criminal network in southern Stockholm. Former friend of Sascha.
Sascha Viklund. Former friend of Abdul. Had a long history of criminal behaviour. Was targeted by Abdul.
Kevin. Young man from southern Stockholm who has been linked to Abdul’s network.
Toj. Former friend of Sascha.
Shayan Gaff. 22-year-old trainee teacher who police suspect was shot dead by mistake, because of his resemblance to Gee, an enemy of the Vårby network.
Gee. Linked to the criminal underworld, and, according to the police, in conflict with the Vårby network and Abdul Haleem’s network, among others.
Carina. Sascha’s mother.
Susanne. Adriana’s mother.
Efficientbonsai. Encrochat alias that has been linked to leading figures of the Dalen network. Convicted of masterminding the Einár kidnapping.
The Greek. Leading figure in the Dalen network. Has been in a highly publicized feud with the Fox since the beginning of 2023. Is currently in hiding abroad.
Rest of Sweden
Hamid. The leader of the Örebro Cartel.
The 47-year-old. A man who held a leading position in No Surrender. Former friend of Hamid, later his enemy.
Ako. A man who held an important position in No Surrender. Was shot dead outside his home in Örebro.
Jappis. Encrochat alias for the suspected leader of a squad that carried out attacks in different parts of Sweden.
Silverear. Encrochat alias of a man who had been registered at the same address as Jappis, and was part of his network.
Rebecca. A drug courier in her twenties from the Stockholm area. Visited the Money Changer. Picked up a large quantity of cocaine from the Hockey Player.
The Hockey Player. Holder in Gothenburg who passed on drugs to Rebecca.
The Boss. The Hockey Player’s employer, who used to socialize with criminals in Biskopsgården.
Maximilian Rivkin. Malmö man and ‘criminal influencer’ whom the FBI used to distribute ANOM. Has been tied to the ANOM alias Microsoft.
Rikard. Man in his fifties with prior convictions. Operated an amphetamine lab with Rivkin, and sold drugs on the Flugsvamp website.
Piotr. Mule and amphetamine lab worker. Worked for Rikard and Rivkin.
Lennart. Mule who worked for Rikard and Rivkin.
The Gothenburgian. 33-year-old man who had a leading position in the Bergsjön network in Gothenburg. Smuggled hashish in marble tiles.
The Plumbing Contractor. Man in Kungälv who was initially named as the recipient of the marble tiles filled with hashish.
The Man in Kinna. Small-business owner who had hashish sent to him inside marble tiles.
Overseas
Alexandre. French prosecutor who led the operation against Encrochat.
Hanski. Finnish police officer at Europol, who insisted that Swedish police be included in the Encrochat operation.
The Angel of Death. Nickname for Ridouan Taghi, a Moroccan-Dutch mafia leader. Believed to have controlled a large share of the cocaine market in Europe. Said to have been an affiliate of the Boxer.
Hakan Ayik. Turkish-Australian drug smuggler and ‘criminal influencer’ used by the FBI to distribute ANOM.
Ali. Park worker in Turkey who found a bag of money that belonged to the Fox.
Timur Soykan. Award-winning Turkish journalist.
Ibrahim Kalin. Spokesperson for the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Peter R. de Vries. Dutch TV personality and crime journalist who was murdered during the trial of the Angel of Death.
PROLOGUE
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes’, I answer.
He gave the stairwell a quick glance before letting me into his flat. A mildly fragrant, but distinctive, scent emerged. If you’ve ever smelt cannabis before, there’s no mistaking it. He told me that he smoked to soothe his nerves, because he got the jitters. He said it was probably ADHD, a diagnosis he had given himself after taking several tests online.
‘Come here’, he said, watching his dog run across the carpet that was littered with bits of stray tobacco.
He bought the dog with his girlfriend before she moved out. Purple curtains hung down in front of the windows, to keep the sun out.
‘So, you’re writing about Encro?’ he said, without looking up at me.
While he said this, he opened the window, sat down next to it, and lit a cigarette. He took a deep drag and blew the smoke out through the opening.
I had come to see him because of his past convictions, which included ones for weapons offences. He told me he had also smuggled drugs into the south of Sweden, but was never convicted for that.
At the time, Encrochat had been the most popular encrypted service by a wide margin. In countless raids, police officers all over Europe found these adapted phones. They were marketed as a safe channel that ‘guaranteed anonymity’.
‘I used it to smuggle drugs’, the young man told me in his flat in a suburb in the south of Sweden.
He bought his Encro phone for 13,000 kronor from a friend who had come across a whole batch of them from one of his contacts in the Netherlands. The phones could also be bought in ordinary little mobile phone repair shops.
All it took was the right connections.
‘Lots of people could sort a phone for you.’
Most Encrochat users agreed that there was no way the police could access the system’s contents.
‘That’s why people discussed drug deals, murder plots – anything illegal, basically – openly on there.’
He told me that he had been careful despite the encryption. Many other users sent each other pictures of expensive designer clothes, watches and jewellery, plane tickets and selfies with weapons, cash and drugs. That was the lifestyle he used to dream of, but he had started to have second thoughts now, he told me. He showed me the scars on his body, which had been left by injuries that could have taken his life. He never really answered my question about how he was earning a living today. ‘Savings’, he assured me, and quickly changed the subject to what I was really there to talk to him about.
‘I remember what things were like before Encrochat’, he said, pacing around in the flat as though looking for something he couldn’t seem to find. One moment, he was adjusting the cushions on the couch; the next, he was filling up his dog’s feeding bowl.
‘What was it like, then, before Encrochat?’ I asked, somewhat tentatively.
‘It was harder for people to kill each other.’
PART 1PANDORA’S BOXFEBRUARY 2020 – APRIL 2020
1
In a house in the French countryside, not too far from the Channel, prosecutor Alexandre waited. His laptop was open on the table in front of him. The flickering blue light of the screen was reflected in his eyes as he glanced over at his phone. He was expecting word any minute now.
Alexandre was tired. Work had been busy lately. Violent crime had grown increasingly extreme, and its perpetrators had been quick to adapt to the digital world. Encrypted chat services were at the heart of this unfortunate development. They were used to plan murders, revenge, and weapon and drug trafficking, all sheltered from outside view.
For police and prosecutors, this had led to a frustrating game of cat and mouse, in which they had been constantly one step behind.
In 2017, phones with the Encrochat encryption service began to appear in more and more criminal investigations, after the servers of several competing services were seized. The first of these phones were sold on websites like eBay, but over the years, it became increasingly common for them to be traded through personal networks that reached all across Europe.
Encrochat had created two operating systems for these rather cheap Android phones. The first one was just like the home screen of an ordinary Android phone, but this dummy system was only there to avoid raising any suspicions. It had no features for making calls, sending text messages or surfing the web. The other operating system had the Encrochat service. On the earliest phones, this was opened by simultaneously pressing the volume and power buttons. After this, a password had to be entered, and then you would be magically transported to an encrypted space from which you could send secure messages. The location service features were deactivated, but the phone did have to connect to the mobile data network and to the nearest base station to send messages. There was also a safety feature, to be used if the owner was raided by the police: if a panic code was entered, all data on the phone would be erased.
According to French authorities, Encrochat had more than 60,000 users at its peak, the majority of them located in Europe.
When the C3N cybercrime department of the National Gendarmerie of France carefully analysed the Encrochat phones they had seized, they made a remarkable discovery. All the data traffic related to this encrypted service appeared to pass through a server room in Roubaix. This French town, which won global renown in the nineteenth century for its textile production, is located in the district of Lille. Alexandre was the head prosecutor for organized crime cases in that district, and that was how this case had ended up on his desk.
After receiving indications that the company behind Encrochat was facilitating serious organized crime, Alexandre and his team had decided to initiate a preliminary investigation.
French prosecutors, unlike Swedish ones, can also initiate investigations against legal persons – in this case, the Encrochat business. The main legal issue here concerned the fact that the unknown individuals who ran the business were offering an undeclared, illegal encrypted communications service in France. On top of this, they were doing it in full awareness of the fact that their customers used the service to commit serious crimes.
Alexandre called in technical expertise from the French national intelligence agencies, and now, here he was, waiting by his computer for a report on the status of this secret operation to come in. He looked out the window and dragged his hand through his cropped, dark hair. Then, Alexandre’s phone rang. He held it to his ear, his hand trembling ever so slightly. The voice on the other end belonged to a member of the French cybercrime police unit.
‘We’re in. Now what?’
Alexandre realized that this was a breakthrough, but he couldn’t yet imagine how major it would eventually prove to be.
‘This is an unprecedented operation’, he thought to himself.
After a few hours of rather lively conversations with representatives of a few selected Europol member nations, Alexandre had arranged access for himself and a team of his colleagues to the ongoing planning of tens of thousands of criminals. This was a huge win. Even so, Alexandre felt uncomfortable. The messages in the chats displayed a ruthlessness that most people would find alarming.
Also, there wasn’t much time.
If this discovery was to be of any real use, they needed to obtain as much evidence as they possibly could before it became obvious to the users that their phones were no longer secure. However, this priority had to be weighed against the urgency of preventing the murders that they were now watching suspects plotting in real time.
And there were a lot more of these plots than anybody could have imagined.
2
In early 2020, the Swedish police officer Putte was posted to the Europol headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. Like most case workers within the Department of National Operations (Noa), he preferred to keep a low profile. People who remembered Putte from working with him in the field, on the other hand, described him as sociable, fit, tall and balding.
Between 1994 and 2004, he served as a neighbourhood police officer and narcotics investigator in the Västerort suburbs of Stockholm. These included Rinkeby, Tensta and Husby, all residential areas that the police had classified as ‘especially vulnerable’. One day, he would be out patrolling the squares, and the next day, he would be conducting surveillance operations targeting some suspect or other. These frequent highs and lows were part of what he enjoyed about the job. Maintaining a presence like that was also a way of commanding a degree of respect from the drug dealers. They all knew how the game was played, and they knew that the police were always on their tails. Back then, though, the seizures were usually grams and hectograms, and it was simply unheard of for minors to be working as mules, carrying 5 kilos of cocaine in a backpack, with a street value of up to 4½ million kronor.
One important reason why Putte was here, in The Hague, was that more and more Swedish criminals were establishing themselves on the international stage. Their networks had tendrils in Greece, the Netherlands, Morocco, Somalia, Turkey and South America – but above all, they were in Spain. At one point, up to 200 representatives of the Swedish criminal underworld were in Spain, far away from the watchful eyes of the Swedish authorities.
Besides offering warm weather and a healthy distance from the Swedish police, the Swedish Enforcement Authority and other similar bodies, Spain was also an ideal hub for anybody who wanted to do business in the illegal drug trade. Europe had become a sufficiently important market for the cartels and mafias to have posted representatives of their own in several different countries, but their presence was particularly large in Spain. They actively sought out buyers of cocaine from South America, cannabis from Morocco, and amphetamines and ecstasy from the drug factories in the Netherlands. In ports all over Europe, corrupt dockworkers and officials were allowing drug shipments to slip through, usually for a fee. However, even for honest dockworkers, it would have been impossible to inspect all the millions of containers that arrived each year. The drugs were concealed in shipments of fruit and other goods that were picked up by shipping companies and transported on to ‘holders’. These, in turn, delivered the drugs to customers who had pre-ordered specific quantities, often using the encrypted phones to place their orders.
According to a report published by the EU, the European cocaine market alone was worth up to €119 billion annually. South American cartels had also begun to send their own chemists over here, to get local production of synthetic drugs up and running.
For a long time, the Swedish police had been facing difficulties in their attempts to cooperate with their Spanish counterparts on drug enforcement efforts – 100 kilos of hashish, shipped across the Strait of Gibraltar on fast boats from Morocco to be transported on to Sweden, wasn’t the kind of case that would be considered a priority in a country where efficient, well-organized smuggling rings were bringing illegal drugs in by the tonne.
The Swedish police were keen to change this.
In the early spring of 2018, Putte and other representatives of the Swedish justice system had arranged a meeting with their Spanish colleagues at the Europol headquarters. Their aim was to convince the Spanish to agree to deepen their cooperation on efforts that targeted the Swedish criminal networks that had established themselves along the Costa del Sol.
After a few months, Putte and his colleagues travelled to Málaga to further develop this relationship. The timing had been fortunate: at that particular time, there was a major investigation under way, targeting an international drug smuggling ring that involved around twenty Swedes. The Spaniards wanted to know more about who they were dealing with, and the individuals in question were easily identified by Noa. Almost all of them were members of the Swedish criminal elite, and were linked to some of the most notorious criminal organizations in Sweden: Bandidos, the Bredäng network and the Death Squad from Stockholm. However, there were also a number of high-profile criminals from the Malmö region.
‘You’ve got your hands full with this lot. Many of them are potential murderers’, they warned the Spaniards.
Just a few months later, the Swedish police were proved right when their Spanish colleagues asked them for help with a stalled investigation into a series of brutal violent crimes involving suspects that had ties to Sweden.
The crimes under investigation included murders, kidnappings and bombings. One of them was the execution of a man who had visited western Marbella to celebrate his son’s confirmation. In August, the police had found two men from the Stockholm area in a house in Mijas. One of them had been bound and stabbed, but had managed to break free and alert a neighbour. The other man had been strangled and shot dead. A few days later, another person died after being shot nine times by a masked man who had ambushed him from behind a rubbish bin.
This wave of violence involving Swedes garnered a lot of media attention in Spain, and the suspects soon came to be referred to as Los Suecos, the Swedes. During this same time, the Spanish police also became aware of a gang leader who had fled Malmö after an attempted murder there. This was Amir Mekky, a Danish citizen of Palestinian descent who had grown up in Malmö and eventually became one of the city’s most notorious criminals.
He was later identified as the leader of Los Suecos, the group that was wreaking havoc all along the Costa del Sol. He was also a priority target for Putte and the others at Europol.
*
When he was younger, Amir Mekky, now twenty-six, had been a promising boxer. There was an old photo of him as a young fighter, 171 centimetres tall, in a blue tank top and blue shorts. He was raising his hands in triumph after winning his debut fight at the age of nineteen. His dark hair was cut short, and his body was compact, with highly defined muscles. Later on, after he injured his hand, the nickname ‘the Boxer’ stuck, although his rivals in Malmö usually referred to him as ‘the Dwarf ’.
The Boxer was known to social services from an early age, and he first started travelling to Spain in his teens. According to several sources in the criminal underworld, he made connections there with suppliers of cannabis from the farms in Morocco. Soon, he was challenging Malmö’s established drug traffickers. He offered lower prices, and subjected any competitors who objected to his activities to brutal violence. By the time he reached his late teens, he had already been a person of interest in several murder investigations, but no charges had ever been brought against him. While all this was happening, he forged alliances with a new generation of criminals who were known to be extremely violent. These new friends included the Death Squad, to whom the Boxer offered sanctuary in Malmö when they were run out of Rinkeby after two teenage boys, Izzy and Maslah, were shot dead. These two unsolved murders marked the beginning of the highly publicized spiral of vengeance between Shottaz and the Death Squad.
The Boxer was described by many in his orbit as an ‘icecold’ operator, who was fiercely loyal to his own people. While he was settling in Spain, suspicions arose that he and his friends were setting up a large-scale drug smuggling operation. Somehow, according to police sources in several countries, he also began to do business with the Moroccan-Dutch mafia leader Ridouan Taghi, also known as ‘the Angel of Death’ – this nickname came from the fact that he was said to call the shots when it came to who would live and who would die.
Taghi has also been identified as a key connection for the South American cartels. He allegedly controlled up to a third of all the cocaine smuggled into Europe, and had amassed a personal fortune of more than €1 billion.
*
The deepened cooperation between the Swedish and Spanish police forces bore fruit immediately. They were able to arrest people within the Los Suecos network, as well as other individuals who had ties to the Bredäng network and the Death Squad. Several suspects were also apprehended in Sweden, and quickly extradited to Spain to be tried in court. The Boxer, however, remained at large.
In any case, these successes proved that international cooperation was a vital approach when it came to going after the top-level players within the criminal networks.
In February 2020, during Putte’s stationing with Europol, this was one of his main objectives: to further improve the Swedish police’s chances of catching individuals who were remotely coordinating serious crimes committed in Sweden.
