Europol Task Force Reports Nearly 300 Arrests Alongside 10 Contract Killings by Minors

Europol investigators have determined that at least 10 contract killings in Western Europe since April 2025 were carried out by minors, according to the agency's Grimm Task Force. The task force, formed that month to target violence-as-a-service recruitment, has also documented more than 100 additional crimes involving minors that include bombings, kidnappings, torture, shootings, stabbings, and setting other children on fire.

The Grimm Task Force has made nearly 300 arrests across Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Britain.

Investigators have identified more than 15,000 online accounts and more than 1,500 people linked to violence-as-a-service activity. Contract payments for such jobs in Sweden range from 3,000€ to 40,000€, a Europol spokesperson said. The process typically begins when someone commissions a crime and funds it, another person recruits through encrypted messaging apps and gaming platforms, and a third arranges logistics and provides the weapon.

On a Sunday evening in March 2025, 16-year-old Rio Berg was shot and killed outside a gym in Stockholm, Sweden. A 16-year-old male was arrested less than one hour later a few hundred feet from the scene while waiting for a pre-ordered taxi with the gun still in his jacket, according to court documents.

The suspect told investigators he took the assignment to pay off a debt after being offered access to encrypted chat groups for criminal work, court records show.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 9½ years in prison. Rio Berg was not the intended target, and the shooting resulted from mistaken identity. "The only thing he admitted was that it was the wrong people and that he did it for money because he was in debt," Anneli Berg, Rio's mother, said.