An investigation into a series of racist shootings in Sweden took a bizarre twist today when both the police and an underworld gang announced that they were pursuing a man now suspected of 15 attacks in the southern city of Malmo.
Meanwhile, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, whose entry into parliament last month has been linked with the shootings, announced a reward for anyone helping to catch the suspected gunman, who escaped from his latest attack – on an Iranian-born hairdresser – on Saturday after headbutting his victim and fleeing the scene on a bicycle.
The police spokesman, Commissioner Borje Sjoholm, said the shootings might have started in October last year. Fifteen incidents are being investigated. Eight people have been wounded in them, and one killed.
The apparent murder victim was a 20-year-old woman named Trez West Persson, who was shot in a parked car with her immigrant boyfriend on 10 October last year. Since he was newly released from prison, the police originally assumed he was a gang target, but they now suppose the pair was attacked because of the colour of his skin.
Suspected targets since then have included one of the city's mosques and a police station. In another incident, a group of African men were fired on outside one of the city's swimming pools. In all, police said there was no obvious motive in 19 of the 50 shootings recorded in the city since last October.
A spokesman for a breakaway group from one of the city's three main immigrant gangs told a Swedish paper that he and his friends were hunting the gunman and patrolling the Rosengård estate, a housing project where approximately 30,000 immigrants live. "We know the area better than the police," he said.
The police have said they see no evidence of vigilante activity on Rosengård, something that would heighten tension in an already tense city. "We are opposed to people taking the law into their own hands," Commissioner Sjoholm said. "Without being flippant, I would say that these gangs have a lower standard of evidence than the police demand."
"The gunman is poisoning Malmö, in a way", said Niklas Orrenius, a journalist on Sydsvenska Dagbladet and author of a well-received book on the Sweden Democrats.
Orrenius said the attacks have introduced racial tensions to the city. "This is the least racist town I have ever lived in," he said. "[Immigrants] are nearly half the population. My eight-year-old daughter is in a school class where nearly half the children are of Arab origin, and the concept of racial difference just doesn't make sense to her."
For the moment the police say they have no real clues or a photofit of the gunman. They hope to get a DNA sample from Saturday's attack, but this will be technically difficult. They are not entirely certain how many attacks have taken place, nor of the gunman's motives. But they are out across the city in force. "I see police cars almost everywhere when I am walking with my children," Orrenius said.
Guardian
