One spring night in 2025, a family is asleep in a flat in Tumba, Sweden. They are soon to have a grenade hurled through the window. A mother is lying there with her small child. The explosion is shocking. A fire breaks out. The husband screams that she must run outside. Then she sees that her legs are gone.
The husband goes “crazy” when he sees what has happened. She has to give him instructions. He drags her out and then runs back inside to retrieve the child.
Now the woman’s statement to the police has been published. This is Sweden in the year 2025.
Just over a year ago, a 34-year-old man is suspected of having been commissioned to carry out a bombing attack against a man who had a drug debt to the Foxtrot network. But according to the investigation, the 34-year-old misunderstands which address is involved and instead throws a hand grenade through the bedroom window of a family with children.
The mother was seriously injured and had to have both legs amputated. Her small child also suffered serious injuries.
How many such assignments has the Foxtrot network been involved in? Why is it not being banned? Politicians ban all manner of other things. They are certainly not afraid to regulate. But when it comes to serious crime, they proceed cautiously.
This summer, the age of criminal responsibility will be lowered to 13.
The woman explains that she lay out on the grass and saw that her legs were gone. She had difficulty breathing. She was driven to hospital at record speed and awoke after a week.
She is deeply affected.
When the mother is interviewed one month after the grenade attack, she says that the pain torments her continuously, around the clock. She also says that she is very afraid.
– Yes, the fear is overwhelming. I cannot be alone, not for a single minute, the mother tells the police.
– My way of thinking has become very negative. I see nothing positive.
Two months later, the situation remains just as bleak. She is not receiving the help she needs. The woman says something particular: the criminals receive assistance from the state. But the victims receive little.
The husband says that he goes to work and has no unsettled matters with anyone. He has never committed any crime.
According to her, it is unfair that the state takes care of criminals while her family does not receive the help they need after what they have been subjected to. The husband tells the police that it is no consolation that the family was not the intended target of the attack. They have nevertheless suffered terribly because of what happened.
– I am a person who goes to work and comes home. I had nothing unresolved with anyone. The only thing I have done is park the car without a parking permit, says the father.
This is how it can appear from the victims’ perspective.
The 34-year-old was reportedly shocked when he discovered that he had thrown the grenade through the wrong window. He says that he cried. But his tears do not give the mother her legs back.
The case against the 34-year-old is now proceeding before Stockholm District Court.
Andreas Nordström in Dagens Nyheter.