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Young men drive online drug trade to Sweden

The post office has become one of the first lines of defence for Swedish Customs in their fight against the growing trend of buying narcotics online.

Published: 2 January 2013 13:40 CET

Young men drive online drug trade to Sweden

Officials have confiscated so many suspected deliveries lately that their analysis laboratory cannot keep up.

“It’s pouring in,” Stockholm duty officer Mikael Lindgren told the TT news agency.

His agency intercepted more than 3,000 items between January and October 2012 at the postal terminal at Arlanda Airport, north of Stockholm.

The annual tally in 2008 was 2,000.

“When we have more resources, we find more,” Lindgren said in defence when asked why the number had not risen more in the past four years.

The average customer is male and born in the 1980s, the agency’s statistics showed.

“You no longer go downtown and buy drugs from the typical dealer – gangly 25-year-old ‘Kalle’ who himself is an former user,” Philip Jansson at the National Bureau of Investigation (Rikskriminalen) told TT.

“Instead, you simply sit at home and order drugs online. The police don’t have any structure for how to conduct investigation online when it comes to narcotics.”

TT/The Local/at

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Swedish rail derailments could be linked to 'Russian-backed sabotage'

The report comes just days after prosecutors arrested two German-Russian men on suspicion of spying for Russia and planning attacks in Germany to undermine military support for Ukraine. There have been similar alleged incidents in several other European countries.

FT also claims that security services in Sweden suspect that a series of recent railway derailments may be acts of state-backed sabotage.

It doesn’t mention any specific incidents, but late last year, a fully-loaded freight train derailed on the Malmbanan near Vassijaure in northern Sweden, damaging around 15 kilometres of the line.

Repairs began quickly, but state-owned Swedish mining company LKAB, which uses the line to transport iron ore was greatly affected, with losses of around 100 million kronor per day while the line was closed and a 3.8 million drop in operating profits for the last quarter of 2024.

It reopened on February 20th, but just five days later it derailed again in Vassijaure, this time along a shorter stretch.

Fredrik Hultgren-Friberg, press spokesperson at the Swedish Security Services (Säpo), reiterated to Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) what’s previously been said, that Säpo is collaborating with police on the Malmbanan investigation.

“Säpo has an ongoing, routine collaboration with the police force on a number of cases, primarily when it cannot be ruled out that a foreign power is involved. One of those collaborations is on the investigation around Malmbanan,” he said.

Hultgren-Friberg declined to comment on the FT’s reports that Russia is planning attacks on European infrastructure.

“What I can confirm is that Russia is the largest single threat to Sweden,” he told SvD. “We’ve said that for a while. What we can see is more aggressive, risky behaviour from Russia in their illegal actions and spying in Sweden.”

Swedish police and Säpo have previously confirmed that they are investigating the Malmbanan incidents as possible sabotage, which doesn’t automatically mean that they actively suspect sabotage, but is also a routine procedure to facilitate the probe.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told Swedish news agency TT that the reports in FT did not come as a surprise to him.

“Russia is prepared to go further and carry out operations and sabotage on other countries’ territory,” he said.

But when asked whether such acts of sabotage had taken place in Sweden, he said that wasn’t the case.

“We haven’t seen any such signs for now, but we are on our toes. Other countries have seen things where they know or believe that there are such connections,” Kristersson said.

In late April, LKAB said it was so badly affected by the derailments that it may need to close temporarily as it’s not able to get stock to customers quickly enough, so its warehouses are nearing capacity.

“It’s a real worry,” LKAB’s CEO Jan Moström told TT. “If we can’t lower our stock then we’re going to have to start dialling down production capacity.”

Moström believes that this could affect up to 600 people – half being LKAB employees and the other half being independent contractors.

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