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CRIME

Swedish man gets 10 years in jail for opium

A 51-year-old man from Umeå in northern Sweden was sentenced to 10 years in prison for aggravated drug crimes involving 4 kilogrammes of opium, local media reported on Friday.

Swedish man gets 10 years in jail for opium

The prosecution had pushed for a 14-year prison sentence, but the man demonstrated extraordinary candor during the investigation of the crime, newspaper Västerbottens Folkblad reported on Friday.

Police were able to solve the crime thanks to the man’s cooperation. As a result, Umeå district court gave him a shorter sentence.

The man was originally arrested for being under the influence of narcotics last month. Police later found several grams of opium in his home, but he tipped them off about a lot more under the sink, where they found two packages of the drug weighing a total of kilogramme.

The man also revealed that he regularly buys and sells opium to customers in Umeå, the report said. In addition, police found a bag in the apartment with 712,000 kronor ($100,000).

Based on the amount of money in the bag and the street price of opium, the prosecution concluded that the man had sold three kilogrammes of the drug, a judgment shared by the district court, the report said.

At the trial on December 29th, the man said that he has never engaged in the sale of drugs and claimed that he was keeping the recovered funds for another person. He added that he does not smoke opium himself due to medical reasons, the newspaper reported late last year.

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CRIME

Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs using apps to hire ‘child soldiers’

The justice ministers of Denmark, Sweden and Norway are to meet representatives of the tech giants Google, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok, to discuss how to stop their platforms being used by gang criminals in the region.

Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs using apps to hire 'child soldiers'

Denmark’s justice minister, Peter Hummelgaard, said in a press release that he hoped to use the meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss how to stop social media and messaging apps being used by gang criminals, who Danish police revealed earlier this year were using them to recruit so-called “child soldiers” to carry out gang killings.  

“We have seen many examples of how the gangs are using social media and encrypted messaging services to plan serious crimes and recruit very young people to do their dirty work,” Hummelgaard said. “My Nordic colleagues and I agree that a common front is needed to get a grip on this problem.”

As well as recruitment, lists have been found spreading on social media detailing the payments on offer for various criminal services.   

Hummelgaard said he would “insist that the tech giants live up to their responsibilities so that their platforms do not act as hotbeds for serious crimes” at the meeting, which will take place at a summit of Nordic justice ministers in Uppsala, Sweden.

In August, Hummelgaard held a meeting in Copenhagen with Sweden’s justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer, at which the two agreed to work harder to tackle cross-border organised crime, which has seen a series of Swedish youth arrested in Denmark after being recruited to carry out hits in the country. 

According to a press release from the Swedish justice ministry, the morning will be spent discussing how to combat the criminal economy and particularly organised crime in ports, with a press release from Finland’s justice ministry adding that the discussion would also touch on the “undue influence on judicial authorities” from organised crime groups. 

The day will end with a round table discussion with Ronald S Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, on how anti-Semitism and hate crimes against Jews can be prevented and fought in the Nordic region. 

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