Turkish security forces detained one of Sweden's most wanted criminals in a crackdown on drug trafficking and gangs on Friday.
Swedish broadcaster SVT, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu Agency (AA) and other media outlets said that the internationally wanted gang leader Ismail Abdo, known as Jordgubben (The Strawberry), was arrested as part of a major operation against drug criminals.
Nineteen suspects are said to have been arrested in Istanbul and other Turkish locations.
Swedish police implicitly confirmed Abdo's arrest on Friday, saying that a "Swedish instigator" had been arrested in Türkiye.
He is suspected of having been involved in serious drug trafficking in Sweden for many years and of inciting violent crimes.
According to the newspaper Expressen, the man, born in 1990, was arrested in the Turkish city of Adana.
Abdo has been engaged in a bloody conflict with his former close ally, Rawa Majid, known as the Kurdish Fox, since 2023.
The conflict has long been at the center of rampant gang crime, mainly revolving around the drug trade in the country, with which Sweden has been struggling for years.
A wave of violence in Abdo and Majid's hometown of Uppsala in late summer 2023 can also be traced back to the dispute.
According to SVT, Majid's network had Abdo's mother killed, after which the situation escalated and 13 people were killed within three months.
Sweden has been searching for him internationally for some time.
