1 / 5Photo: Customs/TT
Rawa Majid is the kiosk owner from Uppsala who became the country’s most notorious gang leader.
Children murder children, relatives are shot dead and the drugs flow. At the same time, rappers and suburban gangs kneel before the “Kurdish Fox”.
Who is the man orchestrating wars on Swedish streets from his exile in Turkey – and how did he become the name on everyone’s lips?
Rawa Majid is in custody in absentia and internationally wanted for murder plans and particularly serious drug crimes. But the list of crimes where the tracks lead in the direction of the 37-year-old father of three can be made significantly longer than that, according to police and prosecutors.
Parents of criminal rivals and former friends have been executed in their homes. Total outsiders have been shot dead, seemingly by accident. Children barely older than his own killers and are killed to order.
Countless bombings have been targeted at addresses linked to gang criminals, indiscriminate shootings have been carried out in densely built-up residential areas, against front doors, through windows or first best young man with a certain type of jacket.
Further murders have been thwarted at the last moment since the police arrested young men and boys, masked and with weapons in hand.
Ice cream and cocaine
Majid was born in 1986 and grew up in Uppsala, where in his teens he ran an ice cream kiosk with his mother. As a 19-year-old, he is convicted of burglary. Three years later, he has taken the step to much more serious crimes.
He was sentenced in March 2009 to 8.5 years in prison for his role in a tangle of smuggled cocaine from the Netherlands.
– He was one of a group of young people in Uppsala who stepped sideways very early on. Some of them you could talk to and even help push in the right direction, others you couldn’t talk to at all – and he belonged to them, says lawyer Tom Placht, who represented Majid in the case.
He goes to prison in the spring of 2015, but is sentenced in July to a new prison term for aiding and abetting kidnapping and aiding and abetting serious assault. In February 2018, he was released on parole and registered just over a year later as having emigrated to Iraqi Kurdistan.
Under the supervision of the Correctional Service and with one year left on his sentence, he is allowed to leave the country because of a threatening image.
Rawa becomes the fox
Another year later, European police crack the encrypted chat service Encrochat and follow in real time how criminals plan and carry out serious crimes.
The alias “Foxkurdish” attracts interest from the Swedish police. The person, later identified as Rawa Majid, organizes extensive drug deals and wallows in thick wads of banknotes and Rolex watches. Through the chats, the police realize that one of the country’s biggest drug wholesalers is on the trail.
They make large seizures and a long series of arrests. “The fox” himself is wanted internationally but manages to stay away – and the business continues.
According to the police, the so-called Foxtrot network continues to organize large-scale drug smuggling into Sweden for further distribution to criminals within and outside the country’s borders.
From Umeå in the north to Helsingborg in the south, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis marked with fox symbols are seized. Subjects, including famous gangster rappers, wear gold rings in the shape of a fox with eyes and tail set with brilliant-cut diamonds to show their loyalty.
Bloody conflicts
According to the police, the Foxtrot network is allied with the Bro network, based in Bro north of Stockholm, the Zero network, based in Jordbro south of Stockholm, and the May network active in southern Stockholm and is considered to function as Majid’s foot soldiers.
On the other side of the main conflict that has been raging since the end of last year is the Dalennävterket, based in Enskededalen in southern Stockholm.
Information in SVT claimed this summer that the warring sides had agreed not to attack relatives after several high-profile attacks on parents and relatives.
According to information in several media, the latest spiral of violence that flared up in Uppsala is based on a rift within Foxtrot where former friends turned their weapons on each other – and each other’s family members.
Turkish opening?
Like several of his enemies, Rawa Majid has bought himself Turkish citizenship by investing in the country. He can thus manage his activities from an authorized distance in a Turkey that, like Sweden, does not extradite its citizens – and continues to keep Sweden outside of NATO.
Domestic terrorism, says Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M). However, the government has been tight-lipped about what is being done to get him extradited or imprisoned. Even from the police, in addition to statements about “intensified work”, the lid is on.
In Turkey, media attention has been next to non-existent, but this week the issue of criminals buying citizenship was suddenly raised in parliament.
Mustafa Yeneroğlu, a member of the social-liberal Democracy and Progress Party, turned to Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya with the question of whether specifically Rawa Majid and a Dutch drug trafficker who is among the EU’s most wanted have been granted Turkish citizenship – and if so, on what grounds?
On Thursday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that a “handful” of Swedes had been arrested in Turkey. According to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these are five Swedish men between the ages of 22 and 30 who were arrested in Istanbul.
FACTS The recent spiral of violence
The night of Thursday, September 7: A woman in her 60s is shot dead in her home in the Gränby district of Uppsala. The police later confirm that she was the mother of a gang criminal man.
The night towards Sunday: Shots are fired at a residence in Stenhagen in Uppsala. Nobody gets hurt.
Monday morning: A 13-year-old boy is found dead in Haninge, south of Stockholm. According to TV4 Nyheterna’s information, he has been shot.
Tuesday morning: A 25-year-old man is shot dead in a stairwell in Sala backe in Uppsala early in the morning. According to media reports, he was not the intended target. The police describe him as “a man on his way to work”.
Tuesday evening: A man in his 20s is killed during a shooting in Sollentuna, north of Stockholm.
The night towards Wednesday: New shooting in Stenhagen – the fourth in Uppsala in a week. Nobody gets hurt.
Thursday morning: Shots fired at an apartment door in Norrköping. Later, four people are arrested and detained for attempted murder and aggravated weapons offences.
Thursday evening: A teenage boy dies after being found shot in Västertorp. That same evening, a terraced house in Jordbro, south of Stockholm, was shelled.
Read moreFACTSVåldsvågen in Stockholm
A large part of the shootings and explosions that took place in Stockholm in 2023 are linked by the police to a conflict between the so-called Foxtrot and Dalen networks.
The conflict is rooted in competition for drug markets between the networks, both of which operate large-scale drug operations in neighboring areas and want to expand.
The conflict has mainly concerned claims on the drug market in Stockholm and Sundsvall. In addition, according to the police, the conflict is driven by a desire to avenge previous acts of violence.
The conflict intensified at the end of 2022 and has resulted in a long series of acts of violence, including murders, attempted murders and bombings. These have mainly taken place in Stockholm, but also in Sundsvall and Uppsala.
The Foxtrot network, which is said to be led by the so-called “Kurdish fox”, is allied with two networks in Bro and Jordbro that act as executors for Foxtrot. Even people from the so-called May network are allied with Foxtrot.
The valley network is allied with a group based in Farsta in southern Stockholm.
Source: Police preliminary investigation report
Read more