The killer was only 14 and had lived in youth homes as a ward of the authorities since he was eight.

A year ago, a gang helped the boy escape, put him up in a hotel and gave him cannabis, food and new clothes. Six days later, gang members told him it was time to repay them for their kindness. They had a job for him.

Together with another youth, the boy, who as a juvenile cannot be identified, shot dead a 33-year-old Hells Angels biker. He was convicted by a court which described the case as a gangland contract killing.

As he was too young to be sentenced, he was handed back to social services and sent to another youth home.

Sweden has long prided itself on one of the world’s most generous social safety nets, with a state that looks after vulnerable people at all stages of life.

But these days it also has another distinction: by far the highest per capita rate of gun violence in the EU. Last year 55 people were shot dead in 363 separate shootings in a country of just 10 million people. By comparison, there were just six fatal shootings in the three other Nordic countries - Norway, Finland and Denmark - combined.

    • MentalEdgeEnglish
      4•6 months ago

      That’s less than a non-response. Self-inflicted sabotage of your own credibility.

      Openly advertising your inability to understand why you disagree well enough to make others comprehend your stance with actual sentences that mean things.

      So you try to pretend that a witty remark counts for something.

      If you ever genuinely tried good-faith discussion, you’d see how little sense your position makes as you’d struggle to put together arguments that actually convince anyone.

      Obviously this person shouldn’t be walking free, and needs serious rehabilitation.

      But the same way adult ex-cons who end up back in prison in the US within months of release due to a fucked justice system, are victims, this literal child groomed into a tool to enact violence at the behest of others, is even moreso.