Who Is ‘The Ghost’ of Scandinavia And His Gang Los Suecos?
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By Chris Summers 12 November 2024
The modern world of organised crime is a multi-ethnic melting pot of nationalities, and a perfect example is a gang known as Los Suecos.
Los Suecos means The Swedes in Spanish but the gang’s leader was Amir Mekky, a Danish national of Moroccan origin, who was known by the nickname “The Ghost”.
Last month Mekky (pictured above) was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a Swedish court.
I warn you that this article will, at times, be a bewildering smorgasbord of names, nationalities and countries. You will have to concentrate in order to keep up.
In March, in one of my first Substacks, I told the story of how a Swedish hitman was sent to London to hunt down and kill Flamur Beqiri, a member of a rival gang from the city of Malmö, on Christmas Eve 2019.
The hitman – Anis Hemissi (pictured below), a Swede whose family were from Tunisia – worked for Amir Mekky’s gang.
Malmö is on the southern tip of Sweden and is directly opposite the Danish capital, Copenhagen.
Anyone who watched the hit TV series The Bridge in 2011 will know Malmo and Copenhagen are effectively linked by the Øresund Bridge, which opened in 2000 and is now used by 70,000 people a day to cross to and from Sweden and Denmark.
Hemissi, flew to London from Copenhagen – after travelling over the bridge from Malmo – shortly before Beqiri’s murder.
In February 2022 Hemissi (pictured below in disguise) was jailed for life for Beqiri’s murder and his accomplice, Esteban Pino-Munizaga was convicted of manslaughter and locked up for 15 years.
Hemissi and Pino-Munizaga had been hired by a middleman, Ahmet Karaer, who vanished in January 2020 after taking a trip to Egypt.
In 2018 and 2019 Amir Mekky’s gang was at war with a drugs syndicate led by Daniel Johansson Petrovski, known as Dani The Jew (despite not being Jewish).
Beqiri – who was of Albanian origin and known to friends as Alex – and his best friend Naief Adawi worked for Petrovski.
Beqiri had relocated to London after Mekky’s gang tried to assassinate his Adawi, in Malmö on 26 August 2019.
The killers missed Adawi – who dropped his infant daughter and ran off – and instead shot dead his 31-year-old girlfriend Karolina Hakim, a doctor.
Her murder shocked a country which has become inured to violence.
But her killing was in revenge after Mekky himself was targeted in 2018 in a shooting which killed three men, aged 19, 27 and 29, outside the Galaxy internet cafe in Malmö.
Justice minister Morgan Johansson described it as an “abominable crime” and said it “reminds us once again that our main task is to fight organised crime.”
Mekky escaped from the Galaxy cafe shooting with minor injuries and fled the next day to Spain, where he started up a new gang, Los Suecos.
Mekky and Los Suecos are believed to be responsible for around 20 murders in Spain in the space of two years.
In May 2018 David Ávila Ramos, a 36-year-old drug trafficker known as “Maradona”, was shot dead as he was leaving a church in San Pedro Alcántara after his son’s first communion.
Ávila (pictured below) was shot five times in front of his wife and two children by a pillion passenger on a motorbike.
Shortly before the murder a beach club and gym which Ávila owned, was burned down.
Los Suecos are also believed to have killed Sofian Mohamed Barrak, a Moroccan drug trafficker known as “El Zacato” (The Grass), who was shot in the garden of his villa in Estepona at 3am on 20 August 2018.
In November 2018 around 120 Spanish police officers raided Mekky’s hideout on the Costa del Sol but they missed him, possibly by a matter of minutes.
Spanish police chief Marcos de Miguel described Mekky at the time as “very dangerous” and Interpol put out an international alert for Mekky.
At the end of 2018 Mekky slipped into the United Arab Emirates and kept his head down in Dubai, possibly copying Irish gangster Daniel Kinahan and other drugs barons.
Mekky used fake IDs to move around Dubai and eat and shop in its swanky restaurants and shopping malls.
But the authorities were given a lead when reports came in of someone dumping rubbish outside a block of luxury flats.
After investigating and checking his ID, they realised the flytipper was Amir Mekky, an international gangster wanted around the world.
Dubai State Security said a “sting operation happened under exceptional circumstances due to movement restrictions in Dubai and the precautionary measures to curb COVID-19.”
In the early hours of 3 June 2020 the police in Dubai swooped on Mekky.
Two days later a news agency in the United Arab Emirates reported he had been arrested in a sting operation.
They said: “Amir Faten Mekky is the leader of one of the most dangerous international crime rings involved in murder, drug trafficking and money laundering.”
The agency added: “Mekky…is associated with one of the world’s most notorious international criminals Radwan (sic) Al-Taghi, the head of the ‘Angels of Death’ gang, who was arrested in Dubai in December 2019 and handed over to Holland.”
Ridouan Taghi, 46, is one of the big beasts of modern organised crime.
He is one of the leaders of the Mocro Maffia, a Dutch-based gang which gets its name because many of the original members were of Moroccan origin.
After being extradited to the Netherlands, Taghi was prosecuted along with a number of associates in the Marengo Trial, which was held in a high-security courthouse known as De Bunker (The Bunker).
In June 2020 Mekky – who had been in Dubai since November 2018, having entered on a fake passport – was arrested and in August 2023 he was extradited to Stockholm on drugs charges.
His lawyer, Mikael Nilsson, told Swedish broadcaster SVN: “He denies all accusations.”
Under Swedish law Mekky could only be charged with the offences for which he has been extradited, and there is no suggestion he will ever go on trial for ordering Beqiri’s murder.
It turned out that most of the evidence against Mekky was obtained from messages obtained through EncroChat, which is interesting considering he was only arrested on 3 June 2020, which was 10 days before the EncroChat administrator revealed the network had been compromised.
When Mekky’s trial finally ended on 23 October 2024, he was acquitted of the most serious charge – aggravated drug smuggling – and instead jailed for 12 years for standard drug smuggling.
He was also convicted of firearms charges – conspiring to smuggle to Sweden eight American CZ P-10 S handguns, with 9mm parabellum ammunition.
Colt, who make the CZ P-1o S, describe it on their website, as a “powerful, large-capacity sub-compact” gun with “optimised dimensions for concealed carry” – meaning it is small enough to hide.
The crimes he was convicted of including smuggling cocaine and drugs in April and May 2020.
EncroChat was breached by French law enforcement in March 2020 and they were live monitoring messages until June of that year, so clearly they caught Mekky in the act.
To give you a little flavour of the court’s judgment (or “domslut”), here’s what they said about one of his crimes: “Amir Mekky har tillsammans och i samförstånd med flera andra i en gemensam brottsplan under tiden 2–8 april 2020 på okänd plats i Sverige olovligen försökt att i överlåtelsesyfte transportera och överlåta minst 1 (ett) kilo kokain eller i vart fall i samråd med andra beslutat att i angivet syfte överlåta narkotikan.”
Now if your Swedish is not great, here’s a translation: “Amir Mekky has together, and in agreement with several others in a joint criminal plan, during the period 2–8 April 2020 at an unknown location in Sweden illegally attempted to transport and transfer at least 1 (one) kilo of cocaine or in any case in consultation with others decided to in specified purpose of handing over the narcotics.”
He was also fined 4.4 million Swedish krona (£320,000.)
Mekky was also served with a permanent deportation order, meaning that at the end of his prison term he will be expelled from Sweden – to his native Denmark – and will never be allowed back into the country.
Mekky is a Danish national but has lived in Sweden since the age of six.
Crime did not stop in Malmo after Mekky and his arch-rival Petrovski were arrested
On 14 July 2024 two British travel agents – Juan Cifuentes, 33, and Farooq Abdulrazak, 37 – were found dead in Malmo. They had been shot and then their hire car had been set on fire.
The family of Cifuentes (pictured below, left, with Abdulrazak) said in a statement put out by the Metropolitan Police, “Juan was a devout Muslim, he was a pillar of strength and compassion, always present for those in need, regardless of their faith.”
“His legacy lives on in his children, who embody the love and values he instilled in them,” they added.
It was said at the time the pair were on a “business trip” and had travelled from Denmark, no doubt over the Øresund Bridge.
But in late August, Yaser Abdelaziz, a 25-year-old member of a gang based in Malmo’s tought Rosengård district, was arrested on suspicion of the murders. It also became clear the killings were linked to a drugs deal that went wrong.
While the Swedish police have a long way to go before they get a grip on Malmo’s crime wave, they will at least be happy Mekky is out of the picture.
By the way Ahmet Karaer – the fixer in the Christmas Eve murder in London in 2019 – remains missing, presumed dead.
His girlfriend, and the mother of his children, Azadeh Etesamipour, is believed to be in hiding from both Mekky and Petrovski.
Mekky is only 27 years old so it is far too early to say his criminal career is over.
It will be interesting to see if the Spanish, or indeed the British authorities, seek to extradite him after he has served his sentence in Sweden.
He could yet face trial for the murder of Alex Beqiri or the crimes of Los Suecos.
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