Two teenage boys from Sweden have been charged in Sweden in connection with a fatal shooting on Økern in Oslo in late April and with a killing in Norrköping, VG reports.
The Økern victim was a 22-year-old man who was shot several times close to a football pitch. He was taken to hospital with critical injuries and died a few days later.
Four days after the Oslo shooting, a man in his twenties was shot and killed in Norrköping in Sweden.
The case links a killing in the Norwegian capital with a second fatal shooting in Sweden, and it puts two young suspects before the Swedish courts. Norwegian police said earlier that one line of inquiry was whether the Økern killing was a commissioned act. The charges reported by VG indicate that investigators on both sides of the border have built a case that reaches beyond the person who fired the shots.
The timing is also significant. The two deaths came within days of each other in April, and the charges were announced in early November, roughly six months later. That gap reflects the scale of the investigation described by police, which has looked at possible organisers and at whether others assisted the teenagers.
The shooting on Økern happened near a football pitch at the end of April. The 22-year-old was hit multiple times and was driven to hospital, where he died some days after the attack.
In May, police prosecutor Anne Mari Hustad told VG that the killing appeared to be targeted. She described it as a very serious act and said a natural part of the continuing investigation was to establish whether anyone had ordered the killing or organised it from behind the scenes.
– This is a very serious act that appears targeted. A natural part of the further investigation is to examine whether there are any clients and backers, Hustad said to VG in May.
That statement set out the direction of the inquiry: not only who carried out the shooting, but who may have set it in motion. Police have also examined whether other people helped the teenagers, and whether there were people who commissioned or organised the act.
VG has previously reported that people fled the scene on an electric scooter.
The second death came in Norrköping, in Sweden, four days after the Oslo shooting. The victim there was a man in his twenties.
The charges have been brought in Sweden, where the two boys are from. VG's headline identifies them as two Swedish boys, and the report does not give their ages beyond describing them as teenagers.
The reporting does not set out the specific charges each boy faces in each of the two deaths, nor does it describe the evidence Swedish prosecutors say supports the case. It also does not state when a trial might begin or how the boys have responded to the charges.
What the report does establish is the link between the two investigations: the same two suspects are charged in connection with both the Oslo killing and the Norrköping killing.
Cases that cross the Norwegian-Swedish border bring practical complications. Evidence, witnesses and suspects can sit in different legal systems, and prosecutors in one country may need material gathered by police in another.
In this case, the Norwegian side has publicly focused on the possibility of organisers behind the shooting, while the charges have been filed in Sweden. The two strands have now converged on the same two defendants.
The police hypothesis of a commissioned killing, as described by Hustad, has not been confirmed as fact. It was presented as a line of inquiry, and the reporting does not say whether investigators have since concluded that someone ordered the attack.
The details VG has published are limited to the sequence of events and the police statements. No motive has been made public for either killing, and the report does not say whether the two deaths are believed to be connected beyond the shared suspects.
The next step is the Swedish court process, where the charges against the two teenagers will be tested. Watch for the prosecution's account of how the two killings are said to be linked and for any further word from Norwegian police on whether they have identified anyone they believe ordered the Økern shooting.
