Follow Fucking Orders

Ann Tornkvist

Description

The brutal 2010 murders of promising footballer Eddie Moussa and his brother were a harbinger of the gang violence now laying siege to Sweden. Written by crime reporter Ann Tornkvist, Follow Fucking Orders captures the freefall of a quaint town, known for its sports-crazed community and top-league football team, into a bloody turf war. After the biggest police investigation into organised crime in Swedish history, the local mob boss was sentenced to life for ordering the hit on Eddie. Author Ann Tornkvist followed the gripping story for five years, securing unique access to families who had fled into the witness protection programme. In 2016, the mob boss tried to derail this book's publication by threatening to have her killed. Undeterred, Tornkvist published Follow Fucking Orders in Sweden in 2018. The first edition sold out within a week and soon became the most popular book in the country's maximum-security prisons. Ultimately, the book offers a chilling reminder that true crime has no last chapter.

Sujets

• Sweden
• True crime
• Suède

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 17 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317415
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Ann T rnkvist, 2020
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316487
eBook ISBN 9781785317415
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Methodology
Character gallery
PART ONE: THE BOSS
Forgive me
The number seven
Money is God
Scarface
Receptionist
The Crown
The cops have always hated me
PART TWO: THE TOWN
Nemaline myopathy
The national team
The long reach of war
Qualifier one
Thou shalt not kill
A hunger for power
The loss of hope
Hold the line
Long live S dert lje
Godless
Clues
Qualifier two
PART THREE: THE VIOLENCE
Christmas
Oasis
The wife
He isn t Zlatan
Wannabes
Bread
Pingu
Cinnamon
Leisure centre
Windscreen
Omert
Tortoise
Milad s list
Get down
The missing word
Drive-by
Copville
Rottweilers
Fanatics
A real man
Contract
Vehicle theft
Civil war
Fuck you, fuck you
Harassment
Job descriptions
Not again
Radiator
Tidier ways to kill someone
f*ucking Arameans
Zelge fans
Widowed
The day I died
Funeral
Eddie s last goal
No arrests
Not that kind of wife
PART FOUR: THE WITNESSES
Holiday
Heron City
Goldsmith
Black eye
Beirut
Uncle Tony
Wedding prep
Bridesmaids
Lazy eye
A declaration of love
Fenix
Tax
Elitism
Passion
Girl germs
Exile
Mafia wives
Embassy
Fuck the law
No vodka
Vilified
Benzo
Lunch boxes
Charges
The Moussas
Unhappy
Princess Oritha
PART FIVE: THE TRIAL
Fuck your mother
White binders
Verdict
The tab
The Fire Finch
Betrayal
Verdict number two
Dreams
Psychopath
Crisps and dip
It makes me feel like a cunt
Church
Question mark
Scale
The slop
wh#re
Naknemo
Best friend
Widow
Cross
Radio silence
The letter
Celebration
PART SIX: THE AFTERMATH
Metaphysics
Slap in the face
Stomach pains
Responsibility
Eddie
PART SEVEN: THE PRICE
Press freedom
Phone call
Death penalty
Grozny
Voodoo doll
Broadcasting House
RIP
Old School
Altar
Epilogue
Dedication
To Fahd and Cajsa
And in loving memory of my grandparents who taught me to do my utmost .
Acknowledgements
WITHOUT THE encouragement of Cajsa Collin and Fahd, this book would have never been written. And without the love of Johannes Rosendahl, Jacek Dabrowski and Annie Hellquist, I would have struggled even more than I did. Thank you, all of you, for being there for me.
Thanks to my family, especially my brother, who has always been my steadfast champion. To my father, who should have been an investigative reporter rather than a physicist slash poet. To my aunt and uncle who lent me their cottage so I could finish the book in peace. To my mum, for being cooler than me and for entertaining my police-protection officers with her war stories from Iraq where, she made sure to point out to them, her armoured car was, indeed, much bigger than theirs, and her bodyguards, one might add, were not just cops, but ex-military.
To my friends who also happen to be authors and thus understand the madness: Joanna Jolly, Julia Wir us, Alia Malek and Sofia Lundgren. Thanks to every one of my friends, and there are many of you, who read chapters along the way and shared your thoughts with me.
Richard Pike deserves special mention for his kind critique and wise words.
And, not least, my publishers and editors at Mondial and at Pitch Publishing.
Methodology
FOLLOW FUCKING ORDERS is based on interviews with witnesses, crime victims and their families, the gang leader and his friends, old classmates, teachers, with town hall politicians and public servants, the police, lawyers, the lead prosecutor, social secretaries and others who have followed the case. Several have asked not to be identified.
Source documents include the police case file, including testimonies from witnesses who have not been interviewed, the two District Court verdicts as well as the Appeals Court verdict, Dany Moussa s 1994 verdict, Bernard Khouri s criminal record and prison service documentation pertaining to his imprisonment, Khouri s letters to me and his letter to the appeals trial, and newspaper and magazine articles.
The football chapters were written with input from sports journalists.
A fact checker was employed.
All quotes are translated from Swedish apart from Milad s quotes as he spoke to me in English, you know .
Character gallery
The Network
Bernard Khouri, gang leader, known as Al Taweel, The Tall One in Arabic.
His predecessor, B lent The Godfather Aslanoglu.
Abraham The Torpedo Aho, Khouri s younger cousin and alleged assassin.
Sherbel Said, another of Khouri s cousins, paralysed in a drive-by shooting.
Travolta , a young mafia errand boy and poet.
The Family
Yaacoub Moussa, eldest son in the Moussa family, manager of The Oasis, married father of four.
Dany, one of the middle sons, the black sheep of the family who set up X-Team in S dert lje.
Georges, who attacked a boy at school after his older brother Dany gave him a knife.
Eddie, the youngest, their mother s favourite child and rising star in Assyriska FF.
Alexandra, one of their sisters.
Mohaned Ali, Dany s friend, X-Team member and a debt enforcer, father of three.
The Dead
Yaacoub, Eddie and Mohaned.
The Cicerone
Philip*, poker genius and drug addict, with friends on both sides of the conflict, who witnessed the murders of the Moussa brothers.
The Extorted
Milad Bahnan, indebted small-business owner, married father of one.
His brother Bahnan, manager of The Parrot caf .
Oritha Chabo, whose brother borrowed money from the wrong people.
Her eldest son Leon, who was born with a muscular disease.
Leon s personal assistant, who prefers not to be named.
The Kidnapped
Georges Abo, former owner of a car used in a drive-by shooting.
The Investigators
Gunnar Appelgren, superintendent and lead detective.
Bj rn Frithiof, lead prosecutor.
Alice Ekengren, beat police officer in S dert lje.
The Lawye rs
Fredrik Ungerf lt, Khouri s defence lawyer.
Jan Karlsson and Elsa Svalsten, The Torpedo s defence lawyers.
Claes Borgstr m, legal counsel for the Moussa family.
The Club
Conny Chamas, devoted Assyriska FF fan and long-time admirer of Eddie Moussa.
Aydin Aho, club director of Assyriska FF.
Andreas Haddad, team-mate and close friend of Eddie.
In the Stands
Issa*, small-fry gambler who witnessed the double murder.
Tony Khouri, Khouri s estranged uncle.
zcan Kaldoyo, Assyria TV contributor and opinion writer.
Jakob Rohyo, furniture store owner, witness to Khouri assaulting a police officer.
Hosep * , witness to Eddie attacking one of Khouri s friends with a kebab skewer.
Olle Eriksson, editor of Filen , a magazine for prison inmates.
Ellinor Persson, Djurg rden IF board member.
PART ONE
THE BOSS
2013
Forgive me
YOU CAN tell from the way Bernard Khouri looks at you that he is always angry. Not even Jesus can help him, says Milad Bahnan.
No one could tell from his calm, average-kind-of-guy drawl that this middle-aged father of one holds the fate of a town in his hands; hands now busy lighting a cigarette - I can tell because I can hear the click of the lighter and the crackle of paper as the cigarette catches fire, and after exhaling Milad picks up the story. It s a long one.
Milad knows the dangers of owing money to men like Khouri. It is so dangerous that he has had to flee his beloved but crime-addled hometown S dert lje, just south of the Swedish capital Stockholm, in order to testify against Khouri, the alleged leader of The Network .
The upcoming high-profile trial has been years in the making and the police are now wrapping up the most extensive investigation into organised crime in Swedish history. Witnesses such as Milad, who has defied the town s code of silence, are key to helping the prosecutors end Khouri s reign.
Milad, a small-business owner who borrowed money from the wrong people, has taken refuge in the police s witness protection programme. New name, new social security number, and the same for his wife and their daughter. And they re not alone; more and more victims have come forward, all being spirited away by the police to keep them safe.
The police talk about the tipping point, when enough people at last say enough is enough . The lead detective likens the thaw in the case, with ever more people coming to the police for help, to a local Arab Spring, when protestors felt they had found safety in numbers. Never before have the Swedish police helped so many witnesses move and change their identities to feel safe enough to take the stand in court.
There s good reason for their fear. Milad has tasted The Network s wrath: a few years back he was assaulted with a captive bolt pistol, the kind used in abattoirs, and he still has trouble sleeping, but he s alive to guide me through the maze of threats, the never-ending demands to pay protection money, taking out loans to make the payments, getting new loans to cover the old ones, seeing fines added to interest rates, handing over envelopes with cash once a month until he had no money left to put food on the table for his wife and kid - the shame he felt and why he kept quiet for so long. And he take