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Stockholm subway station explosion was a hand grenade, police confirm

An explosion at a suburban Stockholm subway station which left a man dead was caused by a hand grenade, police confirmed on Tuesday.

Published: 9 January 2018 15:42 CET
Stockholm subway station explosion was a hand grenade, police confirm
The station where the explosion took place. Photo: Anders Wiklund / TT

The victim, a man in his 60s, died in hospital on Sunday afternoon after he picked up an object at the Vårby Gård station southwest of the city centre, and it exploded. A 45-year-old woman was also injured in the blast.

Police had earlier said they suspected that the object had been a hand grenade, and on Tuesday afternoon a spokesperson confirmed that this was the case.

“Our technicians on the scene have now been able to confirm that it was a hand grenade,” police spokesperson Lars Byström told the TT news agency. He said police did not yet know how the grenade exploded, adding that anyone with information should come forward to them.

Police earlier said that the man who died was unlikely to have been purposely targeted by whoever left the explosive at the station.

Vårby gård is one of 61 areas across Sweden considered to be 'vulnerable', and defined as “a geographically defined area characterized by a low socio-economic status where criminals have an impact on the local community”.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about Sweden's vulnerable areas 


A map showing the location of the subway station, in a southwestern suburb of the capital.

Sweden’s Justice Minister Morgan Johansson has called for an amnesty of the weapons and tougher laws in order to get hand grenades off Sweden’s streets.

Speaking at a government press conference on Tuesday, Johansson said: “It won’t be an amnesty that ultimately breaks down this type of crime, but it prevents such accidents in the future.”

Sunday’s incident has put the spotlight on hand grenade crime, which appears to be on the increase in Sweden over the last few years. Figures provided by the Dagens Nyheter daily last year showed that there were 27 instances of grenades exploding in Sweden during 2016, compared to 10 in 2015.

Johansson said that a harsher weapons law which came into force at the start of this year should help to reduce this kind of criminality. Among the measures introduced was a change in the minimum punishment for aggravated weapons crime and aggravated crime against compulsory licensing for explosives, which was increased from one to two years' imprisonment.

READ ALSO: Sweden's new laws to watch out for in 2018

The minister had already raised the possibility of a hand grenade amnesty — which would be the country's first — in October last year. At the time, he said the proposal for an amnesty between October 2018 and January 2019 would be brought to the parliament in February this year.

While he said that the most effective crime-fighting measures was to deal with the perpetrators themselves, Johansson said on Tuesday: “It can also be a good idea to take in these hand grenades or other explosive goods to get them away from society. The more that are out there, the greater the risk that they go off.”

READ ALSO: Why Sweden has more fatal shootings per capita than Norway or Germany

CRIME

Tech giants promise ‘action plan’ on stopping Nordic gangs using apps for crime

The tech giants Google, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok have pledged to give details "within months" on how they will prevent gang leaders in Nordic countries using their products to carry out serious crimes, Denmark's justice minister said on Friday.

Published: 20 September 2024 16:11 CEST
Tech giants promise 'action plan' on stopping Nordic gangs using apps for crime

After meeting the companies along with other Nordic Justice Ministers in Uppsala, Sweden, Hummelgaard and Swedish counterpart Gunnar Strömmer said he now expected the companies to submit an “action plan” to crack down on the use of their apps to recruit young people to carry our shootings and commit other crimes. 

“I would like it to contain concrete steps on how to use the technology on the platforms to remove and screen content that helps to facilitate organised crime to a greater extent,” Hummelgaard said, while Strömmer said that although he was pleased an important step had been taken it “remains to be seen” how seriously the companies take the issue. 

READ ALSO: Danish gangs’ use of Swedish child hitmen is now a diplomatic issue

Ministers from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland met to discuss gang crime, which in recent months has increasingly been shown to cross national borders, with criminals from Sweden travelling to Denmark to carry out shootings and hand grenade attacks.

According to Hummelgaard, there have been “many examples” of gangs using social media and encrypted messaging services to plan serious crimes and recruit new criminals, with lists of the payments available for carrying out various criminal services  found circulating  on social media. 

“The way I see it, political patience is about to run out, not just in the Nordic countries, but in large parts of the Western world,” Hummelgaard said.

He said the four companies had made “a really good first step” in pledging to establish a “joint Nordic cooperation forum”, where they would exchange experience and share information with each other about the use of their products in the region for crime. But he said he wanted them to be “more concrete than that”. 

READ ALSO: Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs hiring ‘child soldiers’

Hummelgaard said that he tech giants had also asked that the police authorities in the Nordic countries to provide information on what kind of “groupings and names” are using their services and how “they communicate”, so that the content can “be removed immediately”. 

“I sense that they have a clear desire and will to cooperate with us. I think that is positive,” he said. “I would also like to say that until today this has not been the experience of many of our law enforcement authorities around the Nordic countries.” 

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