Mekky, a Danish citizen with a Moroccan background who grew up mostly in Malmö, was extradited from Spain on Thursday, where he had been serving a sentence. 

He was placed in pre-trial detention on Friday on suspicion of committing series drugs crimes and drugs smuggling offences.

“He denies all accusations,” the 26-year-old’s lawyer Mikael Nilsson told Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT. 

The prosecutor, Lisa Åberg, requested that as well as being placed in pre-trial detention for the drugs offences for which he had been extradited, Mekky should also be held on suspicion of other weapons and drugs offences. 

But Malmö district court ruled that at this stage he could only be detained for the crimes for which he had been extradited from Spain. 

“The part [of the case] with these new criminal charges will only kick in once Spain has agreed that he can be prosecuted in Sweden for these crimes,” the judge, Niclas Söderberg, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper. 

Members of the Los Suecos gang were given significantly reduced sentences when they were tried in Spain in exchange for agreeing to plead guilty to two of the murders for which they were suspected. 

In Spain, Mekky admitted being an accessory to one of the murders, and he had been held in pre-trial custody so long that he was due to be released from prison soon, leading Sweden to revive its accusations against him, leading to his extradition. 

Mekky was the intended target of a triple murder which took place on the Galaxy Cyber café in 2018, but escaped alive, albeit injured.

This shooting was one of the early attacks in a tit-for-tat gang war between people close to Mekky and other criminal groups in Malmö which two years ago led to one of the city’s biggest gang trials, with the cracking of the Encrochat secure messaging service giving police unprecedented access to the planning of the attacks. 

Mekky was arrested in Dubai in 2020, after which he was extradited to Spain.