A key figure in the Foxtrot criminal network, who is alleged to be responsible for shootings in Sweden, has been arrested in Iraq as part of an operation to disrupt “assassination missions”.
Ali Shehab, 21, is accused of recruiting children to kill rival criminals and was detained in the city of Sulaymaniyah, in Iraq's Kurdistan region.
He is an associate of Rawa Majid, a gangster known as the Kurdish Fox, who founded the Foxtrot network.
Foxtrot has unleashed a wave of gang violence in recent years that has led to Sweden’s murder rate rising to among the highest in Europe.
Mr Shehab is suspected of instigating five murders and 23 attempted murders, including a spree shooting in the town of Farsta, near Stockholm, in 2023, Swedish national broadcaster SVT said.
He has also been linked to the murder of a man with connections to Ismail Abdo, who runs the Rumba network, a rival of Majid and Foxtrot.
“He is a person who orders murders,” Sweden’s National Police Commissioner Petra Lundh told SVT. "He has been in Iraq and made those orders."
Swedish police say he is part of the “violence as a service” phenomenon, where criminals hire children through social media to carry out attacks on rivals, with the knowledge that in Sweden anyone under the age of 15 cannot be prosecuted.
Mr Shehab – who has Swedish and Iraqi citizenship – was on Europol's most-wanted list and is also the subject of an Interpol Red Notice.
His arrest, by Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, is described by Swedish police as a “strategic breakthrough” in the fight against Foxtrot.
It is part of a long-term effort to build relationships and co-operation with the Iraqi authorities to “interrupt assassination missions, counter deadly violence and strike against criminal actors who not only affect Sweden, but also the stability and security of Iraq”.
Stefan Hector, Deputy National Police Commissioner, said: “We thank the police and other law enforcement agencies in Iraq. They have helped us capture another gang criminal who instigates murder from abroad.”
Swedish police say extradition procedures are under way. In October, Poya Shafie, another associate of Majid, was extradited from Iraq to Sweden.
Majid is believed to be enjoying the protection of Iran, where he was born, after his family escaped from Iraqi Kurdistan following Saddam Hussein’s war with the Kurds. The family was then given refuge in Sweden but his parents are now believed to be living in Sulaymaniyah, in Iraq's Kurdistan region.
He fled to Iran from Turkey, where he had been living to avoid extradition to Sweden on drug-trafficking charges. He acquired Turkish citizenship which had protected him from deportation but the Swedish authorities had hoped Majid’s prosecution on forgery charges would result in his citizenship being revoked.
Majid is alleged to have been hired by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to organise attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Sweden and Denmark, for which he has been placed under sanctions by the US and the UK.
As part of an investigation into Foxtrot, The National spoke to a teenage gunman who arranged hits for the network and a woman who wants answers from Mr Majid about the murder of her son.
Majid’s feud with Mr Abdo, a one-time associate nicknamed “Strawberry”, led to a series of reprisal killings.
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 turf war while their leaders lived overseas.
The conflict intensified after the killing of Mr 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.
