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Security guard held after weapon stolen from Swedish government offices

A security guard is being questioned on suspicion of stealing a service weapon from the Swedish government offices, just weeks after half a dozen other firearms went missing from the building.

Published: 2 December 2019 15:11 CET

Security guard held after weapon stolen from Swedish government offices

File photo of Swedish government buildings. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT

The security guard was to be questioned on Monday, prosecutor Lucas Eriksson told AFP.

At the end of October, six other firearms and ammunition were reported stolen from the government offices, which are protected by guards from the private security firm Securitas.

According to Swedish media, the weapons were six Glock pistols and 300 special bullets kept in a safe and to be used in case of a heightened security threat, such as a terrorist attack.

Investigators are trying to determine if there is a link between the two thefts.

Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist deemed the thefts unacceptable.

“We need to have good control over the handling of weapons in our country,” he told Swedish news agency TT.

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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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