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. http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/4048/
