The so-called Swedish hitman's office has been installed on the Costa del Sol and Malaga. The criminal structure that connects organizations based in Sweden with young people recruited to carry out contract murders is comfortable in this area of eastern Andalusia and from there they carry out the orders they receive. So far this year, the Judicial Police of the Malaga Provincial Police Station have thwarted nine attempted murders and arrested 12 men, as EL MUNDO has learned.
The profile of these hitmen is especially worrying for investigators. They are, in many cases, young people of only 19 or 20 years of age, in their early youth, recruited to commit crimes of extraordinary violence. They do not necessarily have a long criminal history behind them, as indicated by police sources. Some are precisely the product of a new dynamic of Nordic criminal organizations: available young people, displaced to other countries and prepared to take on assignments that can end in murder.
His way of acting adds another difficulty. They live camouflaged, apparently far from any criminal activity, while they wait for instructions. They can remain for days or weeks in a home without attracting particular attention and activate their activity when they receive the order. This structure allows organizations to keep executors in Spain and avoid, in certain operations, last-minute trips from Sweden. The Judicial Police of the Provincial Police Station of Malaga maintain numerous investigations into these networks and closely follow the movements of their members.
The Costa del Sol also offers a particularly favorable setting for this type of criminal activity. It is a territory with enormous international mobility, with thousands of rental homes, intense tourist activity and a consolidated presence of organizations dedicated to drug trafficking and money laundering. Criminal groups of different nationalities and origins coexist in this ecosystem, which facilitates the emergence of connections between organizations that operate in different countries.
A recent case has highlighted the extent to which the danger can reach those who have no connection with the criminal world. On September 18, a 20-year-old Spanish man was shot in the Malaga neighborhood of Barcenillas. The police investigation concluded that the perpetrators had chosen the wrong person. Three Swedish citizens were arrested and later sent to provisional prison. Investigators determined that the young man was mistaken for another person by the perpetrators of the attack.
The case is especially revealing because it introduces a variable that is extremely worrying to the Police: when those who carry out a murder operate with incomplete information, a wrong photograph, an imprecise description or a faulty identification, the target can cease to be the true target in a matter of seconds. The police concern does not reside only in the nine murders that have been prevented or in the 12 detainees. The most significant data is what is behind these operations: the capacity of these networks to establish themselves in Spain. The Costa del Sol, therefore, has become part of the logistics of these organizations.
