Sweden must abandon its policy of "silent diplomacy" towards Iran as it faces a wave of gangland warfare orchestrated by a fugitive mobster.
A leading politician told The National that Stockholm should publicly call for Iran to hand over gangster Rawa Majid, who is hiding there to avoid facing justice for a string of offences.
Alireza Akhondi, who was born in Iran and is a prominent critic of the regime, told The National he knows Majid is on Tehran-controlled territory.
The 39-year-old self-styled 'Kurdish Fox' established the drug-dealing Foxtrot criminal network, which has brought unprecedented violence to the once peaceful Scandinavian nation that now has one of the highest murder rates in Europe.
Majid’s feud with Ismail Abdo, a one-time close associate nicknamed 'Strawberry', who runs the rival Rumba network, led to a series of tit-for-tat killings.
Swedish police said this week that a seizure of cocaine in the south-west of the country, weighing at least 200 kilograms, was linked to the Foxtrot network and a suspect was arrested. It is one of a series of busts the authorities have made in recent years.
The Foxtrot boss has also been accused of carrying out attacks on Israeli targets on behalf of Iran, for which he has been placed under sanctions by the US. Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security are believed to have recruited the gangster in return for sheltering him.
Mr Akhondi, a member of the Centre Party, said the Swedish government should publicly call for the gangster to be handed over so he can face trial, rather than negotiate in private.
He said: “I think it's the only way forward. I always believe that it's important to have a clear voice and the Swedish silent diplomacy, as they call this method, I don't think that works."
Mr Akhondi said being publicly accused of harbouring a criminal would damage Tehran’s reputation. “I think the Iran will say ‘he’s not here, we don’t know where he is’," he said.
"They do everything to [pass off] their story as fact but if the Swedish state goes out and says it actually knows he's there, hopefully it will have some consequences.”
Sweden once had one of the lowest murder rates Europe but now it’s two and a half times the continent’s average – a gruesome statistic in large part driven by the criminal activities of Majid.
Majid was born in Kermanshah, Iran, where his parents fled in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s war on the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan. The family eventually settled in Sweden, though his mother Pari Saleh and father Rekawt Majid have now returned to Iraq and live in Sulaymaniyah.
Majid's life of crime began when was convicted aged 19 of burglary and cigarette smuggling, before moving on to drug dealing.
Despite being sentenced to eight years in jail after drugs were found in his garage by police, he still managed to build an extensive criminal network and has been a key player in the escalating gang violence in Sweden.
He left in 2018 for Turkey, where he obtained citizenship through its golden visa programme by buying property in the country. Swedish authorities have called for him to be extradited.
Around this time he began referring to himself as the Kurdish Fox. The origin is believed to be similarity of his first name Rawa to räv, the Swedish work for fox.
From the city of Uppsala, he spread his network through violence – much of which was carried out by children hired on social media.
Children are recruited by criminal groups to carry out attacks on rivals as, under Swedish law, no one can be convicted until they are 15, with lighter sentences likely for under-18s.
His activities spilt out from the criminal underworld and into the geopolitical arena in May 2024, when Israel’s Mossad and the Swedish Sapo intelligence agencies revealed Iran had been using criminals from Foxtrot and Rumba networks to target Jewish and Israeli targets in Sweden.
In March this year, the US government linked an attack on the Israeli embassy in January the previous year to Majid and Foxtrot, and placed both under sanctions.
Majid is also the subject of an Interpol red notice, which states he is wanted on murder and attempted murder charges, as well as drugs offences, going back to 2020.
Mr Akhondi said if Sweden wants results, it needs to have a bargaining chip. He said releasing Hamid Nouri in return for Swedish EU diplomat Johan Floderus and dual citizen Saeed Azizi was a missed opportunity. Nouri was serving a life sentence after being found guilty for his role in a purge in which at least 5,000 prisoners were killed in Iran in 1988.
“Sweden does what it can but everything is about leverage,” he said. "And we had the leverage with Hamid Nouri but we gave him away for free, from my perspective, and now it's difficult."
Sweden's Ministry of Justice has been approached for a response.
The trial in Norway of a former associate of Majid for allegedly shooting a friend of the gangster, which he denies, shone a light into the feud with Abdo.
The trial heard the man charged over the shooting previously worked with the victim to help Majid escape Turkey, after a price of up to €4 million ($4.7 million) was placed on his head by his rival.
Prosecutors allege the gunman switched sides and went from helping Majid to shooting the gangster's friend on the orders of Abdo.
Abdo himself was arrested in Turkey in July, along with two of his associates. He is wanted for a series of drug offences and ordering attacks on his rival.
Majid reportedly owns a $2.1 million mansion in the Turkish coastal resort of Marmaris and a luxury flat overlooking Istanbul’s business district.
In 2023, he was arrested in connection with the discovery of $12,400 and 2,400 Turkish lira found on a park bench in Marmaris that police linked him to but he left the country before he was charged.
The US Treasury said he uses the name Miran Othman as an alias. A Swedish prosecutor also confirmed this to The National.
According to public notices in Turkish newspapers, in 2022 a Miran Othman was involved in a legal dispute with a real estate company over property in the city of Bodrum worth €1.7 million.
The dispute centred around the defendant not paying a brokerage fee. The notice shows that despite the property company seeking to recover the money, the enforcement action was not successful.
Records show the property was eventually sold to Ismail Abdo, who in turn sold it on again.
The case is an indication of how close the two gangsters were before they fell out and their feud spiralled into violence on the streets of Sweden.
Their dispute is believed to stem from a drug shipment in 2023, which led to violence between their networks. Rival members started to kill each other in a brutal turf war while their leaders lived overseas.
The conflict intensified after the killing of Abdo's mother in Uppsala. Two teenage boys were detained in connection with the killing. Majid’s mother-in-law survived an attempt to kill her.
The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention outlines how the country’s homicide rate has increased dramatically over the past two decades and how children have been recruited to carry out killings.
The organisation says the gun homicide rate in Sweden now ranks highly in relation to other European countries, at about four deaths per million inhabitants a year, compared to the average of 1.6 per million. About 62,000 people are active in, or have connections to, criminal networks in Sweden, police say.
Previously, criminal groups such as motorcycle gangs had clear rules on the use of firearms, including who should use them.
That began to change in the early 2010s, when criminals became associated with specific neighbourhoods rather than a centralised gang. This shift was linked to changes in the drug market, where territorial control over sales became increasingly important.
The looser structure meant the use of violence was no longer strictly regulated. Gang members not in leadership roles were now becoming targets.
It was around this time that Majid began to emerge as a major crime figure in Sweden. As the decade progressed, gun violence became more common in personal feuds. A new type of well-planned shootings became prevalent and groups began to use gun violence as a source of income.
Manne Gerell, a criminologist from Malmo University in Sweden, said: “We've gone from a situation where you had a gang and they would send one of their top guys to shoot someone.
“Now they will instead hire a project leader who will recruit people running logistics, intelligence and shooters. So that means that it's become more open to anyone.”
Recruitment of children began in the 2020s when youngsters with little direct involvement in the disputes that triggered the violence were hired to carry out killings, driven by the promise of status and money.
Mr Gerell said Sweden is now facing the long-term consequences of the gang warfare involving Foxtrot and Rumba.
“We now have hundreds of kids, teenagers who are going to be out on the street again in a few years, and I'm not sure how they are dealt with it,” he said.
“Or how they can be dealt with to try to reduce risk of them being involved in further violence in the future.”
