Illegal firearms in Europe: a collection

[AdamG]

POLICE who brought down one of Scotland’s most ruthless crime gangs yesterday pledged to track down and seize their multi-million pound property empire.
Nine of the heavily-armed drugs gang were convicted last week after flooding Scotland with guns and cocaine.
After dismantling their operation, detectives are targeting their dirty fortunes, much of it ploughed into properties on the Costa del Sol and other European holiday resorts.
The gang raked in more than £2m a month by supplying guns and drugs to other organised crime groups.

*

DCS McLean said the availability of firearms from Eastern Europe made it easier for the Scottish gang to get their hands on high-quality weapons including a Skorpion submachine gun – the weapon used in the Paris terror attacks in 2015.

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/weve-b...es-playground/


See also;

Automatic rifles used in January’s Paris attacks that killed 17 have been traced to a shop in Slovakia that sells deactivated weapons as “movie props”, it was reported on Wednesday. The decommissioned weapons legally bought in Slovakia were reconverted to fire live ammunition – a process that gun experts say can take as little as “an hour” to complete – and used in the deadly attacks on a Kosher supermarket and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, French police reportedly believe.

The Slovakian police officers tracked the guns to a shop in the west of Slovakia, where records revealed they were sold legally, as “expand” (expansion) weapons. The sale of such arms is perfectly legal in Slovakia.
Expansion weapons are once live firearms that have been mechanically deactivated to fire blanks for use as props in movies, for historical re-enactments or private collections.
In Slovakia, such weapons – even the heaviest machine guns – can be sold to anyone over 18 who carries ID. It took five minutes for a Novy Cas reporter to purchase a neutralised VZ 58 the double-action, semi-automatic pistol Coulibaly shows off in a video which emerged after his death. After producing some ID, he walked away with the gun for just €250 (£183).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-Slovakia.html

Huh. There must be a hell of a markup going on here.

The three men had, between them, amassed weapons worth up to €25,000 (£19,000) – including three Kalashnikovs, Soviet-made Tokarev pistols, a Skorpion submachine gun, and a rocket launcher.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...r-weapons.html

[davidbfpo]

This is a report on the case, with an obvious pointer to how the police found a "way in".
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-42307952

Scotland does have an organized crime problem, but firearm use is low. It appears this gang needed the firepower to extend and protect their activity.

[davidbfpo]

Why? The very short article starts with:

Although crime has fallen in recent years, the number of grenade attacks in Sweden soared from eight in 2014 to 52 in 2016, according to the Swedish Police Authority.

Link:http://www.theweek.co.uk/90114/swede...s-attacks-soar

Not that the Uk is immune from the use of grenades, notably the 2012 attacks by Dale Cregan, in Manchester, which ended with two women police officers being killed in an ambush.
Link to first article found:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-arrested.html

[AdamG]

Sweden is among the world’s safest, richest and best-run countries enjoying steady growth and rising employment. But it has been experiencing an unprecedented surge of gang shootings, bombings and sexual assaults.

In a country of 10m people, more than 320 shootings and dozens of bombings were reported in 2017, along with more than 110 murders and 7,226 rapes — a 10% increase on 2016. More than 36% of young Swedish women say they feel unsafe at night.
The authorities have admitted they are unable to investigate rape cases immediately because the resources are focused on gang crime. “We are forced to choose between two evils,” the police said.
The crime surge is mainly confined to so-called “areas of social exclusion”, a code for neighbourhoods such as Rosengard that are predominantly populated by immigrants. They are not classic ghettos — the infrastructure and services are better than in areas of central London — but these communities are plagued by high crime rates and unemployment.

In Malmo, where a fifth of the 340,000 inhabitants are under 18, children as young as 14 roam the streets with Kalashnikov assault rifles and bulletproof vests. The average age of gang members is 22, the vast majority of them hailing from migrant families.

Sweden has pursued a liberal immigration policy for more than a generation; its government speaks of being a “humanitarian superpower” for having taken in a large number of asylum seekers. After the migrant crisis of 2015, when more than 160,000 people sought asylum, the policy was abruptly changed. Yet there is little debate or reliable data about the integration of the 12% of the population that derive from non-western countries.
For a long time the Swedish establishment played down the decay of immigrant-dominated suburbs, but it can no longer ignore the explosion of violence.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...eden-q83g055k9

[davidbfpo]

A court result, Part 1 is Post No.6:

The downfall of Scotland's most sophisticated crime gang was triggered by a surveillance operation on a Toyota Yaris.The nine men, who have been sentenced to a total of 87 years between them, went to remarkable lengths to conceal a terrifying arsenal of weapons, vast quantities of drugs and large amounts of dirty money.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-west-42635866

[AdamG]

AT LEAST four Calais migrants are fighting for life after being shot when two rival groups clashed in a two-hour running battle after food was handed out at the French port last night, police said. Gunshots rang out as a group of Eritreans brawled with Afghans on the northern French coast.
Four people were critically injured in the shooting, including one who was blasted in the head, with another two also suffering bullet wounds.

http://www.france24.com/en/20180201-...s-brawl-france

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...l-Macron-brawl

Life imitates art

[davidbfpo]

Well this EU-funded research tome may help, due to the size 484 pgs., I have not read it and have only skimmed the contents list.

The title says enough:

Triggering Terror:Illicit Gun Markets and Firearms Acquisition of Terrorist Networks in Europe

Link:http://www.flemishpeaceinstitute.eu/..._bw_lowres.pdf

The title implies a crossover with terrorims in Europe (which has its own thread) so this maybe double posted.

The countries covered are: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Italy, Holland. Romania, UK, North Africa and the Ukraine.

(Added 22nd April '18) A short article based on this report and another by Jason Burke. The 'another' report is:http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/about...-firearms.html

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-report-warns