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Suspicious bag paralyzes central Gothenburg

An area around a hotel near Nils Ericson Place in central Gothenburg was sealed off for several hours on Thursday afternoon following the discovery of an abandoned briefcase.

Published: 13 March 2008 15:38 CET

Suspicious bag paralyzes central Gothenburg

The area was reopened around 4 o’clock after a police bomb robot had destroyed the bag.

The hotel is located in the same complex as Gothenburg’s central train station and bus terminal.

Police had asked people in nearby buildings to stay away from windows facing the sealed area, according to news agency TT.

The building includes a hotel, shops and office space.

Head of the police operation Leif Nerhall decided to stop all traffic on Nils Ericsongatan, which normally carries bus, car, and trolley cars. Buss traffic to and from Nils Ericsongatan was also been affected.

The brown briefcase which caused police to seal off the area was left near a taxi stand outside the hotel, and there was no explanation as to how it came to be there.

Tech giants promise 'action plan' on stopping Nordic gangs using apps for crime

After meeting the companies along with other Nordic Justice Ministers in Uppsala, Sweden, Hummelgaard and Swedish counterpart Gunnar Strömmer said he now expected the companies to submit an “action plan” to crack down on the use of their apps to recruit young people to carry out shootings and commit other crimes.

“I would like it to contain concrete steps on how to use the technology on the platforms to remove and screen content that helps to facilitate organised crime to a greater extent,” Hummelgaard said, while Strömmer said that although he was pleased an important step had been taken it “remains to be seen” how seriously the companies take the issue.

READ ALSO: Danish gangs’ use of Swedish child hitmen is now a diplomatic issue

Ministers from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland met to discuss gang crime, which in recent months has increasingly been shown to cross national borders, with criminals from Sweden travelling to Denmark to carry out shootings and hand grenade attacks.

According to Hummelgaard, there have been “many examples” of gangs using social media and encrypted messaging services to plan serious crimes and recruit new criminals, with lists of the payments available for carrying out various criminal services found circulating on social media.

“The way I see it, political patience is about to run out, not just in the Nordic countries, but in large parts of the Western world,” Hummelgaard said.

He said the four companies had made “a really good first step” in pledging to establish a “joint Nordic cooperation forum”, where they would exchange experience and share information with each other about the use of their products in the region for crime. But he said he wanted them to be “more concrete than that”.

READ ALSO: Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs hiring ‘child soldiers’

Hummelgaard said that he tech giants had also asked that the police authorities in the Nordic countries to provide information on what kind of “groupings and names” are using their services and how “they communicate”, so that the content can “be removed immediately”.

“I sense that they have a clear desire and will to cooperate with us. I think that is positive,” he said. “I would also like to say that until today this has not been the experience of many of our law enforcement authorities around the Nordic countries.”

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