Lithuanian crime wave hits Sweden

RIGA - Swedish police are struggling to keep track of a new crime wave
sweeping the country, which they say stems from Lithuania. According
to the Swedish daily evening paper Aftonbladet, the situation in
Lithuania is so poor that people there are looking for pickings in
richer countries to the West.

"The situation in Lithuania is so miserable, people even drag home
parts of bicycles," criminal inspector Thord Modin told Aftonbladet.

Around 40 percent of all people detained in the Swedish county of
Blekinge are Lithuanians, Aftonbladet reports.

Lithuanian criminals have now shed blood on Swedish ground. On Nov.
19, Gosta Andersson, 65, was mugged and killed by three young
Lithuanians. His hands were tied behind his back and he was left in
the trunk of his car to die.

Then the gang traveled south to Denmark, where they robbed and killed
Danish citizen Allan Toft Dideriksen, 27. The men are currently in
police custody in Denmark and have confessed to the two killings.
Since 1997, it has not been necessary for travelers between Sweden
and the Baltic countries to present a visa at the border. Police in
Sweden told Aftonbladet that it has become more and more popular for
criminals seeking their fortunes to take the passenger ferry from
Gdynia to Karlskrona.

"When the salary of a public servant is not enough to support a
family, then of course it results in corruption," Modin told
Aftonbladet.

The police profile of Lithuanian perpetrators is simple: They are
young, mostly born in the 1970s or 1980s. They drive a VW Golf or
Opel Kadett and claim at the border that they are on their way to
Norway on vacation. There are usually three or four people in the
car, and sometimes they carry phony passports.

"They often have tools for burglary with them," criminal inspector
Lars-Erik Ragnarsson told Aftonbladet. "The cars may be equipped,
for example, with a compartment underneath the back seat so they can
smuggle out stolen goods."

Swedish police officials say that most Lithuanian criminals caught in
Sweden are from the cities of Kaunas and Panevezys.

"We are tired of commenting on the crimes of Lithuanian citizens in
Sweden, Germany, Britain and Spain," Petras Zapolskas, director of
the Information and Culture Department of the Lithuanian Foreign
Ministry, told The Baltic Times.

"If we have information we pass it to the Lithuanian Interior
Ministry. Sometimes Lithuanians detained abroad are on the run from
the police here. For example, some recently detained Lithuanians in
Spain were wanted in Panevezys."

TheLietuvos Rytas daily writes that the crime rate of Lithuanians in
Sweden exceeds the combined crime rate of Estonians, Latvians and
Russians there. The daily claims that some have ties to Swedish
criminal gangs.

A conference in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda in December brought
Lithuanian and Swedish police officials together in an effort to
boost the fight against crime.

Additional reporting by Rokas M. Tracevskis