by Viktor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] One of Sweden's most notorious crime bosses, Ismail Abdo, known as Strawberry, fled to Turkey and began running his gang remotely. He also attempted to establish control over the drug market in Finland.
This led to a sharp expansion of drug trafficking in Suomi and violent conflicts between criminal groups in Finland and Sweden.
Abdo and his "officers" eventually ended up behind bars, but this hydra, as a rule, grows a new head in place of the severed one.
FIERCE COMPETITION
Thirty-five-year-old Ismail Abdo is one of Sweden's most notorious crime bosses. Born in Uppsala to Turkish immigrants, he chose a life of crime at a young age, joining a gang. As a young man, he served five and a half years in prison for drug trafficking and involvement in a shootout.
Abdo earned his nickname "Strawberry" (Jordgubben) because he was once involved in the berry business. This type of business in Scandinavia often borders on illegality: berry farm owners mercilessly exploit migrant workers brought in from Third World countries, underpaying them and keeping them in brutal conditions, with poor sanitary standards.
Moreover, they often cheat with labels, passing off, for example, strawberries grown with pesticides as organic, premium products. Finally, farm owners often evade taxes.
However, Abdo's main "specialty" was and remains drug trafficking. He previously served on the leadership of the largest Swedish gang, Foxtrot, led by Rawa Majid, nicknamed the Kurdish Fox. But at some point, the ambitious Abdo and Majid had a falling out.
He formed his own network, Rumba, and attempted to wrest a lucrative turf from his former colleagues: drug trafficking to tens of thousands of addicts across Sweden. Naturally, a standoff immediately erupted between Rumba and Foxtrot, accompanied by murders, explosions, and shootouts.
Since Abdo has become such a well-known figure for some time now and there is ample evidence against him, he chose to move to his parents' homeland and began managing his organization remotely from Turkey.
It is noteworthy that Majid, when things got too hot for him in Sweden, also fled to Turkey and commands his Foxtrot from a distance.
As a result, the war between the Kurdish Fox and the Strawberry gang resumed on Turkish territory. On September 6, 2023, Majid's men attacked a café in the Sarıyer district of Istanbul, where members of another gang liked to hang out.
The attack failed, and in retaliation, Abdo and his accomplices killed one and wounded another of Majid's men on March 27, 2024.
However, even earlier, the Kurdish Fox managed to strike Strawberry in the most sensitive spot: in September 2023, Majid ordered the murder of Abdo's mother, who lived in a villa in the Grenby district of Uppsala, Sweden.
The order was carried out. Two teenagers hired by Foxtrot were arrested on suspicion of committing the murder.
In response, Abdo ordered the assassination of Majid's mother-in-law, who was shot at on September 13, 2023, also in Uppsala. But the amateur killers missed.
MAJID TRIUMPHS
The Rumba gang, led by Klubnika, continued its operations in Scandinavia in full force. The criminals found their signature move: using the Swedish postal system to distribute drugs to their "clients."
At the end of 2023, local police reported that they estimated there were 150 underground centers across Sweden (50 of them in Stockholm) where drugs were packaged and then shipped to buyers across the country.
Postal workers open suspicious packages almost daily, but many reach their intended recipients. "There are numerous indications that the leader of the criminal group, Ismail Abdo, controls a significant portion of this market," says Stockholm police inspector Mats Baakki.
According to him, the packers are at the very bottom of the criminal hierarchy and work for pennies. People higher up the chain of command operate on the darknet and coordinate their activities, sending both the drugs themselves and lists of addresses for their distribution to the packing centers.
However, the hand of the law eventually caught up with Strawberry outside of Sweden: in July 2025, Ismail Abdo was arrested in Turkey and remains in custody there to this day.
His arrest was the result of a joint effort by law enforcement agencies from Turkey, Sweden, and Norway. In total, nineteen individuals associated with three different criminal networks were arrested during the operation, ironically dubbed "Strawberry."
Incidentally, Abdo was already arrested in Turkey last year, immediately after the attack on Majid's men, but he was released on the minimum bail of 20,000 lira (approximately 39,000 rubles). The criminal, however, refused to lie low and continued his previous activities on an even larger scale, for which he paid the price.
Immediately after Klubnika's re-arrest, four of his henchmen were detained in Spain, where they had arrived to kill members of a rival gang. Two of them were young men, a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old, from the Swedish city of Borås.
This is unsurprising: Rumba is one of those gangs that widely uses minors as their "bio-drones." When recruiting teenagers, they are told that they won't face any serious consequences if arrested, as Swedish criminal law doesn't penalize children very harshly.
Strawberry faces numerous charges, including several attempted murders and an attempt to import a large amount of cocaine (1.3 tons) into Scandinavia, seized in 2024. Later, the Swedish Central Criminal Police (KRP) reported that they suspect Abdo of organizing the import of large quantities of drugs from Sweden to Finland. Consequently, in October 2025, the Helsinki District Court issued an arrest warrant in absentia for him.
KRP suspects that Abdo may soon become a defendant in other criminal cases in Finland. However, it is already known that Turkey will not extradite Klubnika due to his Turkish citizenship. The trial in Istanbul is still ongoing, but it will likely end with a lengthy prison sentence. For now, Majid can celebrate: he has won.
THE END OF THE "INITIATIVE"
Police detectives discovered that Abdo, whose gang had recently found Sweden a bit cramped, had recently decided to take over neighboring Finland.
He himself, of course, never came to Finland. The core of the Finnish network consisted of four trusted men who controlled the smuggling flows, drug sales, and various violent crimes. This year, all were arrested and convicted.
One of these four was Karl Björkandahl, a twenty-year-old resident of the Finnish city of Porvoo. At first glance, he seemed little different from his peers: he owned a small auto parts business, drove a modest car, was into rap, and wrote and recorded his own tracks.
Neighbors were stunned to learn that Björkandahl had been detained by the police: he was accused of involvement in a shootout in Helsinki's Lassila district. Abdo's men were attempting to resolve the problem of their rivals—a local gang outraged by Rumba's intrusion into their territory.
Karl himself also provided evidence against himself: he made a boastful rap video featuring himself, in which he effectively claimed to have orchestrated the shootout. Police included the video in their investigation. The evidence proved irrefutable, and the court sentenced Karl Björkandahl to ten years in prison.
The investigation revealed a host of curious facts. On behalf of Klubnika, Björkandahl organized the illegal importation and distribution of various types of drugs into Finland. He also collected the proceeds from the drug sales.
The young man also collected debts from those who accepted large shipments of "goods" but failed to pay on time. In particular, he once ordered his henchman to burn down the premises of a biker club.
When all these circumstances came to light, Björkandahl received another "five" (above). He remained silent during interrogations, and in court he admitted only a small part of the charges against him. To this day, Abdo Karl denies any connection with Ismail.
Soon after Björkendahl, another of Klubnika's emissaries in Finland, 36-year-old Swede Tobias Larsson, was brought to trial. He was also sentenced to nearly ten years in prison. Larsson acknowledged his connection to Abdo, and said he had interacted with Klubnika personally for a considerable time before he was forced to flee the Scandinavian kingdom.
Finn Toni Iinatti was a key player in the network built by Klubnika in the Finnish regions of Tampere and Pohjanmaa; he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for drug trafficking.
Another close associate and ally of Klubnika is Besha Aziz, nicknamed Gorilla. Police uncovered their correspondence; in one message, Abdo wrote to Aziz: "We need to take care of Finland. Come with us, brother?"
According to police, Aziz took on a particularly sensitive "job": recruiting underage Finns to commit violent crimes in Sweden. "Gorilla" was recently sentenced to seventeen years in Sweden.
Experts estimate that Rumba, while suffering a major blow, has not been completely defeated. They fear the gang will soon recover, recruit new members, rebuild its structures, and resume operations at its former peak. Or another criminal organization, no less dangerous, will take its place.
In a tragic example, in 2020, Swedish police managed to hack the encrypted phone network EncroChat, used by criminal groups, resulting in hundreds of arrests. However, the resulting "vacuum" quickly led to newcomers eager to fill it.
In particular, this helped Foxtrot, and then Rumba, rise to prominence. Moreover, Foxtrot is still doing extremely well—it was the main beneficiary of the blow dealt to Rumba.
Related:
Ismail Abdo 07/17/2025 Top Foxtrot gang member arrested in Erbil: Swedish media
Ismail Abdo 07/06/2025 Swedish gang leader arrested in Turkey
Ismail Abdo 06/10/2024 How Sweden became a 'haven' for mafia gangs and the EU's gun crime capital off the back of surging...
Ismail Abdo 07/17/2025 Top Foxtrot gang member arrested in Erbil: Swedish media
Ismail Abdo 07/06/2025 Swedish gang leader arrested in Turkey
Ismail Abdo 06/10/2024 How Sweden became a 'haven' for mafia gangs and the EU's gun crime capital off the back of surging...