Two boys aged 12 and 13 were recruited for a Malmö grenade attack, after accepting an assignment through TikTok and Signal that would have paid them SEK 30,000 (€2,640).
The boys were arrested by police before they could throw two live hand grenades through the window of a building in Rosengård, according to Swedish public radio P4 Malmöhus.
Malmö District Court (Malmö tingsrätt) has now found that the two boys committed serious offences involving explosives and prepared an act of public destruction. Because they were only 12 and 13 at the time, however, they cannot receive a criminal sentence.
The boys were given two hand grenades
The boys made contact with the person behind the assignment through TikTok and Signal. They were promised SEK 30,000 (€2,640) to carry out the attack.
According to the court proceedings reported by Swedish media, they later met a person who gave them two live hand grenades and instructions on how to use them.
They were supposed to break a window and throw the grenades inside. The boys said they did not know who the intended target was.
Police intercepted them in Rosengård before the attack could take place.
The case was examined through a Swedish legal procedure known as a bevistertalan. It allows a court to determine whether a child below the age of criminal responsibility committed an offence, even though no criminal punishment can be imposed.
Recruitment started on social media
The case also reflects a wider method of recruitment that Swedish police say is increasingly used by criminal networks.
According to police, initial contact with children often takes place on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat. Communication can then move to encrypted services including Signal and Telegram, where instructions for shootings, explosions and other violent crimes are shared.
The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) is currently studying how criminal networks recruit children and teenagers in digital environments. The agency says violent assignments can be advertised openly on social media before planning moves into closed groups and encrypted chats.
The Malmö case shows how young the people drawn into these operations can be: the two boys were still several years below Sweden’s ordinary age of criminal responsibility when they were recruited for an attack involving live grenades.
