A teenager has been arrested in Spain for allegedly leading a hitman service that provided criminal clients with underage assassins.
Spain’s national police force said it had arrested a minor and his parents, all Swedish citizens, in their home in Alicante, from where the son and father operated their alleged murder-for-hire network.
The boy, reported to be just 14, “played a key role in the recruitment and payment of other minors hired to commit murders”, according to a police statement.
He allegedly recruited other youths from Sweden and Denmark on the messaging app Telegram, which he then used to provide details and instructions on targets and organise the delivery of weapons and explosives.
The rate for a hit was reportedly between €20,000 (£16,667) and €50,000.
The national police, who raided the family’s home earlier this month, said on Wednesday: “This home was set up as an operations centre, from where the suspects managed the social media accounts used to recruit young people and give the subsequent orders for the execution of murders.”
Police in Spain began to investigate the organisation after arresting a 17-year-old in May who was found loitering around a residential complex in Benalmádena on the Costa del Sol.
Investigators determined that the suspect, a Swedish national, had been flown into Spain to murder a motorbike gang member and intended to escape on the e-scooter provided by the organisation.
The suspect was found in possession of gloves and insulating tape, elements police believe he was planning to use in the murder he was planning to commit.
The police said that the organisation was preparing to supply him with an assault rifle for the planned attack against the bike gang member, thought to have been commissioned by a rival criminal gang.
Having foiled that alleged murder plot, Spanish police began to investigate the organisation behind the plan, uncovering a network of underage killers-for-hire.
Sweden and Denmark’s police forces co-operated in the investigation. Two other minors, also of Swedish nationality, have been arrested in Denmark in possession of firearms and accused of planning to commit a murder.
All of the suspects arrested were Swedish and Danish nationals of north African descent, according to ABC.
Drug trafficking
The organisation is also suspected by the police of being involved in drug trafficking and money laundering to conceal the criminal origins of its gains.
Police sources said they were certain that the organisation had been behind several murders over recent years.
According to the sources, the family of three rarely left their apartment in San Juan, a town about six miles north east of central Alicante.
The sources said this was the first time that an organisation using children as assassins had been uncovered operating in Spain.
“In Sweden it is more common; we have seen videos in which 13 year-olds shoot an adult to death with a much greater cold-bloodedness than experienced professionals,” sources from the investigation told ABC.
Spanish police said the investigation had also uncovered a major criminal network between Sweden and Eastern European countries.
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