Lang Conteh thought the two loud cracks were fireworks from the nightclub. Then he spun around and saw his Jamaican friend on the ground. A bullet had grazed his trouser leg, ripping a cellphone and ID card from his pocket.
Police say the June 26 attack is among about 15 shootings of immigrants linked to a lone gunman over the last year. The victims have been shot at by bus stops, in their cars, through the window of a gym. One died, several were wounded and a climate of fear blanketed Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city.
Police said on Sunday they had arrested a suspect in the serial shootings, a 38-year-old Swede with a gun license and no previous criminal record.
After questioning, a prosecutor formally arrested the man on suspicion of one count of murder and seven counts of attempted murder. He denied the allegations, police spokesman Borje Sjoholm told reporters.
The shootings came amid growing tensions over immigration in Sweden. The far-right Sweden Democrats entered Parliament for the first time in Sept. 19 elections, winning 20 of the 349 seats.
Their support is strongest in southern Sweden, including pockets of Malmo where some ethnic Swedes blame the high crime rate on the influx of immigrants.
Forty percent of Malmo’s 300,000 residents are first or second-generation immigrants.
“There is a lot of fear. People are afraid to go out at night, in the morning and even during the day,” Bejzat Becirov, head of the Islamic center that runs Malmo’s mosque, said in an interview.
On Dec. 31, a shot was fired into an office inside the Islamic center’s building.
Police confirmed the shooting, but not yet any link to the serial gunman.
Before the serial shooter, a blood-soaked feud between crime clans with Balkan roots dominated the headlines. A well-known member of one clan was murdered at a gas station. A top member of the opposing clan was then gunned down in downtown Malmo. Other shootings have been linked to the feud, which is still running.
With all that going on, the first attack later attributed to the serial shooter appeared related to Malmo’s gangland violence.
On Oct. 10 last year, a 21-year-old convicted drug smuggler on furlough from prison was shot in the head in a parked car. He was hospitalized for a month with a bullet lodged in his brain but survived, Swedish media reported. A 20-year-old woman sitting next him was hit in the head and died.
Police say the weapon in that shooting was the same as the one used in other attacks linked to the mysterious gunman.
Naser Yazdanpanah, a 57-year-old tailor from Iran, believes he confronted the gunman on Oct. 23 after a shot was fired at his shop when he was ironing trousers. He says he rushed out to the street and tried to stop the shooter.
Malmo has historically been a blue-collar city whose identity was closely tied to a bustling shipyard that built freighters and submarines. The shipyard closed in the 1990s.
Few regretted the loss. The city aspired to be at the forefront of Sweden’s evolution from manufacturing to a service economy steeped in IT, banking and fashion design.
Today, the former industrial harbor houses a university with 25,000 students and modern apartment complexes.
Residents take pride in the transformation and a sense of exuberance has infused the city since a road-and-rail link to the Danish capital, Copenhagen, was completed in 2000.
But optimism has been tempered by negative headlines about crime and xenophobia. Jews say they feel unsafe in Malmo because of a rise in hate crimes.
Unrest flares up at regular intervals in Rosengard, a district dominated by immigrants from Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon that is seen across Scandinavia as an emblem of failing integration.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese