The number of people prosecuted for human trafficking has increased significantly in Sweden in recent years. The research company Acta Publica has examined the development and states in a report that in 2012, 66 people were prosecuted for human trafficking offenses, while the corresponding figure for 2023 was 263 people – four times as many.
Prisoner in a wooden box
Despite the fact that the crime appears to have become more common, kidnappings are not reported much in the media. According to the report, one of the reasons for this may be that the typical victim is neither rich – like Siba director Fabian Bengtsson, who was held captive for 17 days in a wooden box in an apartment in Gothenburg in 2005 – nor famous – like artist Einár, who was kidnapped and humiliated by the Vårby network in 2021.
The investigation shows that it is common for the victims to be individuals who are themselves involved in criminal activity, and that the kidnapping is carried out due to a drug debt or as revenge for a previous violent act.
Humiliating the victims
According to the report, money is the most common motive for kidnapping a person. It can involve pressuring the victim or their relatives for money or collecting a real or alleged debt. And it's not uncommon for it to be about relatively small amounts of money.
The sums demanded by the kidnappers vary from a few thousand kronor to several hundred thousand kronor. The investigation shows, however, that the perpetrators rarely succeed in getting away with much, sometimes ending up with just a few items or a bank card.
In every fourth conviction, out of a total of 377 examined, the kidnapping has involved some form of humiliation of the victim. This includes the victim being forced to undress naked, being spat on or urinated on, or being forced to kiss the perpetrators' shoes. The humiliation may also have been photographed or filmed and sent on.
Acta Publica has gone through 380 district court convictions from January 2015 to June 2024 regarding human trafficking.
Based on the convictions, all 939 individuals convicted of human trafficking have been mapped in terms of age, gender, and sentence.
The majority of those convicted were between 18 and 34 years old, and 93 percent of them – 871 people – were men.
Motives, methods, development over time, and geographic distribution have also been analyzed based on the convictions.
The analysis shows that every fourth examined conviction contains various forms of humiliation of the victim, some of which border on torture-like treatment. There are several examples where the perpetrators have cut off a finger of the kidnapped person or where the victim has been subjected to mock execution.
In six of the convictions examined, people have died in connection with the kidnapping.
Source: Acta Publica's report "The Kidnappers"
