Teenage girls groomed into building bombs for Swedish gangs James RothwellSeptember 27, 2025 at 12:00 AM 0 Swedish gangsters are recruiting teenage girls to kill and maim rival criminals with firebombs, a Telegraph investigation has found.
- - Teenage girls groomed into building bombs for Swedish gangs
James RothwellSeptember 27, 2025 at 12:00 AM
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Swedish gangsters are recruiting teenage girls to kill and maim rival criminals with firebombs, a Telegraph investigation has found.
In an attempt to evade Swedish police, gang members are using social media sites to offer cash payments to girls as young as 15 to carry out the bloody contracts – teenagers such as Olivia, 17, who was caught on a CCTV video casually handing over bags containing an explosive material nicknamed "napalm".
The attackers are known in Sweden as "Green Women" because the gangs believe that teenage girls are less likely to arouse suspicion when buying and storing firebomb materials than men.
Damaged caused to a block of flats after a gang-related bomb attack in Sundbyberg in 2024 - Linnea Rheborg/Getty
One expert, who has interviewed multiple teenage gang members, said the handlers were increasingly on the lookout for "young, blonde, typical" Swedish girls to carry out the contracts.
The tactic marks a shift from previous years, where gang handlers would groom impoverished or vulnerable boys, such as the mentally disabled, as they were deemed easy to manipulate.
The Telegraph understands that some girls take on the high-risk contracts to help compete for senior leadership positions within the male-dominated gangs, in a perverse mirror image of the challenges of women in the corporate world.
Others simply use the blood money to treat themselves to luxury clothes and handbags.
The Telegraph has seen text messages and video footage relating to a case in which a 17-year-old girl, Olivia, was hired to build and deliver a firebomb for an arson attack on a rival gang member's home.
Olivia's case was just one of hundreds in 2024 where teenage girls aged 15 and over were charged with murder, manslaughter or other violent gang-related offences.But Swedish investigators say the true scale of the use of so-called "child soldiers" is likely to be much higher, as so many of the cases never reach a courtroom.
In the case of Olivia, the teenager was approached by a gang "handler", a criminal based overseas who arranges gang hits with children over social media sites.
In text messages seen by The Telegraph, the handler tells Olivia that he wants her to carry out a "napalm" attack, referring to a petrol bomb. He stresses that the attack must be carried out "today" and offers Olivia more money as an incentive.
According to Swedish investigators, Olivia then went shopping to acquire petrol, petrol cans and a crucial everyday ingredient – that is available in most hardware shops – to assemble a Molotov-style firebomb.
The Telegraph has chosen not to identify the third ingredient to avoid inspiring copycats.
She then combined the ingredients to form what Swedish investigators refer to as a firebomb "batter" and delivered it to some male accomplices in the same gang.
CCTV video seen by The Telegraph shows the moment that Olivia hands over some bags, which Swedish investigators say contained the napalm mixture.
Further text messages between Olivia and her boyfriend show him asking her how "it" went, an apparent reference to the contract, with Olivia responding that it "went OK".
The boyfriend then texts her a link to a news story covering the ensuing arson attack, followed by a Swedish slang word which roughly translates to "wild" or "cool".
According to court documents seen by The Telegraph, Olivia was later convicted of aiding and abetting arson, for which she received a one-year prison sentence. The Telegraph has taken care not to identify her fully as she was a child at the time of the offence.
Lisa dos Santos, who is a leading prosecutor of organised drug criminals, says young girl assassins fly under the radar - David Rose for the Telegraph
Lisa dos Santos, a Swedish prosecutor who has handled many child gangster cases, said she has been left deeply disturbed by the rise of girls acting essentially as young assassins or murder accomplices. "They [the gangs] call them Green Ladies, green as in newbies, because the police initially didn't look at them in the same way as the men," she said.
"The police are now aware that girls are taking part but I think it's still easier for them to fly under the radar."Ms Dos Santos said that, in her experience, girls carry out the gang contracts because they can be highly lucrative, with some reports suggesting as much as 150,000 kroner (£13,000) is on offer for an assassination.
The police bomb squad work outside the domestic flight terminal at Goteborg Landvetter airport in 2016, thought to be linked to gangs - Frida Winter/TT/AFP via Getty
Less risky assignments, such as buying and mixing napalm to assist assassinations, carries a much lower rate, estimated to be several thousand kroner.
"I think they share this fascination for an exclusive lifestyle, expensive jewelry, bags, clothes, you know," said Ms Dos Santos. "We've seen a pattern where after taking part in this type of crime, they go shopping." While gang crime is nothing new in Sweden, which has one of the worst gun crime rates in Europe, the use of children – and now, increasingly, girls – has shocked the prosperous Nordic state, once considered the epitome of European calm and stability.The recent disclosure that 280 girls were suspected of serious gang crimes last year, data that was first reported by German newspaper Die Welt, has also triggered a diplomatic spat with Hungary.Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, hit back at Sweden this month – which had accused him of trying to "dismantle" the rule of law in his country – by bringing up the child gang crime figures.
"The Swedish government lectures us about the rule of law. Meanwhile, according to an article by Die Welt, criminal networks are exploiting Swedish children as killers, knowing the system won't convict," Mr Orban claimed.
Sweden, which is increasingly frosty towards Hungary due to the latter's Kremlin-friendly foreign policy, dismissed that claim as "outrageous".
Bomb disposal experts collect suspicious devices left by robbers in Gothenburg in 2008 - Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/AFP via Getty
Earlier this month, the Swedish government announced it would lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 for serious crimes such as murder, closing a loophole where the youngest child gangsters can escape justice entirely.But Swedish crime experts say the country needs to more urgently confront the rise in the use of children as de facto "child soldiers".They also note that there are fundamental societal issues in Sweden, such as poor integration of impoverished children from a migration background, which have made the issue harder to tackle.Evin Cetin, a former lawyer, youth crime expert and author of In Our Midst, a book that investigates child gangs, said many of the girls felt a need to prove to their male counterparts in the gang that they are just as tough.
"What we are seeing is the girls are sometimes using more violence than the boys, showing that they are capable of committing crimes, to show that they can be part of it too," she said.
Police at the site of an explosion in Olskroken, Gothenburg, in 2023 - Adam Ihse/TT News/AFP via Getty
One male gang member interviewed by Ms Cetin told her that "young, blonde, typical Swedish women" were in high demand for the contracts, because the police would not automatically find them suspicious.
"The reason why he wanted [them] was the idea that Swedish society, the Swedish system, the police, would never stop a blonde Swedish girl – would never think that she could be a part of committing these crimes," she said. "Recruiting women and girls from all kinds of areas in Sweden is a strategic plan for the gangs to minimise their risk of being stopped by police or controlled by the government," she added.
There is some hope for Sweden, as statistics for 2024 have also shown that the number of "violent deaths", which includes gang murders, is in decline for the first time in a decade.Sweden's National Council for Crime Prevention recorded 92 incidents of "deadly violence" in Sweden in 2024, a fall of 29 compared to 2023.
But as long as there are gang handlers able to operate with impunity overseas – such as by using social media to groom youngsters – the killings are likely to continue.
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