When Abdo’s mother was murdered at her home in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, in September last year, it opened a darker, increasingly violent chapter in Sweden’s gang wars.
A pair who were 15 and 19 at the time were found to have carried out the murder.
Majid fled abroad facing an international arrest warrant, an Interpol red notice and a growing list of enemies.
Born in Iran to Kurdish Iraqi parents, he had moved as a child to Sweden with his family.
He left Sweden for Turkey in 2018 then moved to Iran last year.
Israeli’s Mossad intelligence agency alleged that Majid had been working with Iran for months. It has blamed both his and Abdo’s gangs for the recent attacks.
When counter-intelligence chief Daniel Stenling said Sapo “can now confirm that criminal networks in Sweden are proxies that Iran uses,” Iran summoned Sweden’s highest diplomat in Tehran in protest.
Sweden has also sought the arrest of Majid’s rival, Ismail Abdo, who was arrested in Turkey last May but reportedly released on bail.
Journalist Diamant Salihu says Tehran has sought to persuade the gang to “commit crimes for the regime,” although Abdo’s gang has denied involvement with Iran.
While the gangs themselves may have been put under pressure by a foreign power, that cannot be the case for the teenagers who have become caught up in the wider Swedish problem of gang crime.
An estimated 14,000 people in Sweden are caught up in criminal gangs, according to a police report from this year, external, and a further 48,000 people are said to be connected to them.
