Despair in Sweden as gangs recruit kids as contract killers

Örebro (Sweden) (AFP) - "Bro, I can't wait for my first dead body," wrote an 11-year-old boy on Instagram in Sweden, where gangs recruit children too young to be prosecuted as contract killers on chat apps.

"Stay motivated, it'll come," answered his 19-year-old contact.

He went on to offer the child 150,000 kronor ($13,680) to carry out a murder, as well as clothes and transport to the scene of the crime, according to a police investigation of the exchange last year in the western province of Varmland seen by AFP.

In this case, four men aged 18 to 20 are accused of recruiting four minors aged 11 to 17 to work for a criminal gang. All were arrested before carrying out the crimes.

The preliminary inquiry contains a slew of screenshots that the youngsters sent to each other of themselves posing with weapons, some with bare chests or donning hooded masks.

Warning: This article contains disturbing details from the start.

A group of children spotted Adel's body on their way to school, just as his parents were heading to the police station to report him missing. A grotesque, charred silhouette, reclining, with one knee raised, as if lounging on one of Marseille's nearby beaches.

He was 15 when he died, in the usual way: a bullet in the head, then petrol poured over his slim corpse and set on fire.

Someone even filmed the scene on the beach, the latest in a grim series of shoot-then-burn murders linked to this port city's fast-evolving drug wars, increasingly fuelled by social media and now marked by chillingly random acts of violence and by the growing role of children, often coerced into the trade.

"It's chaos now," said a scrawny gang-member, lifting his shirt in a nearby park to show us a torso marked by the scars of at least four bullets - the result of an attempted assassination by a rival gang.

France's Ministry of Justice estimates that the number of teenagers involved in the drugs trade has risen more than four-fold in the past eight years.

"I've been in [a gang] since I was 15. But everything has changed now. The codes, the rules - there are no more rules. Nobody respects anything these days. The bosses start... to use youngsters. They pay them peanuts. And they end up killing others for no real reason. It's anarchy, all over town," said the man, now in his early 20s, who asked us to use his nickname, The Immortal.

Despair in Sweden as gangs recruit kids as contract killers

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New South Wales Police say 11 people have been killed in a shooting at Bondi Beach targeting the Jewish community, with 29 taken to hospital - including a child

Eli Schlanger, a British-born rabbi, was among the 11 killed in the attack, his family has confirmed

An event being held at the beach to mark the start of Hanukkah had more than 1,000 in attendance, police say

Several improvised explosive devices were removed from a nearby vehicle which police say was linked to the "deceased offender"

Bondi Beach shooting: One of the gunmen who shot and killed 11 people at a Jewish gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney earlier today, has been identified as Naveed Akram. Police confirmed that Akram, 24, was shot during their operation, and has been arrested.

Who is Naveed Akram?
According to a report by the Daily Mail, Naveed Akram, a resident of Bonnyrigg in south-west Sydney, and was reportedly one of two shooters who opened indiscriminate fire at a Hanukkah gathering at the famous Bondi Beach.

Akram's Bonnyrigg home, which his family have owned for a year, is being raided by the police, reports said, adding that the 24-year-old sustained a gunshot injury and has been arrested by the police, who have also recovered his driver's license.

Akram, who is of Pakistani origin, had studied at Central Queensland University in Sydney, and was previously associated with Hamdard University in Islamabad and the Al Murad Institute, according to the Jerusalem Post.