Original Gangsters (gang)
Encyclopedia
Original Gangsters is a Assyrian/Syriac criminal gang
in Sweden
. Founded in 1993, it has its base in Gothenburg
and members in Halmstad
and Jönköping
, among other places, and is one of a handful of Swedish criminal gangs that have received significant media attention. Its leader and founder is Denho Acar
, who fled Sweden in 2007. The current number of members is uncertain: Original Gangsters' own figures of some one hundred active were disputed by the Swedish police, which describe the gang as currently being significantly decimated..
The gang took its name from the term Original Gangster used by gangsta rap
per Ice-T
in 1991.
in 1993 by Denho Acar
(alias "Dano" or "Djingis Khan") and two of his childhood friends. Denho Acar was born in Midyat
, Turkey
in 1974, to Assyrian
parents, and his family moved to Bergsjön in 1985. In 2007, Denho Acar fled to the tourist resort Marmaris
in Turkey since he was wanted for an arson
attack against a Gothenburg café. Being a Turkish citizen, Acar is able to avoid extradition while he remains in Turkey. Acar had never received Swedish citizenship, only a residence permit, and in August 2008, it was revoked.
Turkey-based Acar remains Original Gangsters' leader in Europe
, but handed over the title of as the gang's "president" in Sweden in 2008. The extent of the gang's European activities outside of Sweden, which would be what Acar leads, remains somewhat unclear.
Interviewed for a 2007 book, Acar claimed that the number of members is around 100, with an inner circle of around 30. All members are men, and the gang's members have varying ethnical backgrounds: most are from countries where there have been significant immigration to Sweden, such as Iran
, Finland
, Turkey
(Assyrians
), Latin America
or the former Yugoslavia
, but there are also many Swedish members.
The sign of membership is a tattoo
of the gang's symbol, which has been inspired by the Assyrian flag
and shows the letters "OG" in the middle of a sun.
The first known large-scale violent conflict was in 2000, with the Naserligan
gang, the members of which was of Albanian
extraction. The conflict was over profitable activities in Gothenburg, such as illegal gambling. However, there was also a background of a senior member in OG having stabbed two Albanian's in 1996, when they had been working as bouncers. Following the OG man's release from prison in February 2000, shooting between the two gangs erupted in May 2000 outside an illegal gambling place in Gothenburg, leading to two of the Albanians been wounded. The revenge came on June 4, 2001, when members of the Original Gangsters were targeted at a public bathing place (Näset) in Gothenburg, and a gunfight erupted among bystanders. One person of Naserligan received a chest wound during the shooting. Several violent events followed during the summer of 2001, including the serious wounding of an innocent 37 year old bystander in a night club where the two gangs collided. The shooting at bathing place did however lead to a police crackdown with two hundred arrests and fifty confiscated weapons during the following year, leading the two gangs to enter a truce.
Another conflict involved Original Gangsters and X-Team, a supporter club of Bandidos
. It was initiated by night club quarrel between the younger brothers' of the two gangs on June 15, 2002. Acars younger brother told an OG member by the name of Kotaran of the event, and he decided to murder the leader of the X-Team for what his younger brother had done. The following night Kotaran went to the X-Team leader's apartment, and took firing position in the flower arrangements outside. He identified a person which he shot dead with eight shots. The person he murdered was however not the X-Team leader, but his younger brother, i.e., the person actually involved in the quarrel the night before. This triggered a series of violent events between Original Gangsters and X-Team. Following another police crackdown on criminal gangs in western Sweden, the two gangs entered a truce in 2005, when X-Team was upgraded to a regular Bandidos club. This truce was however broken in July 2007 in Halmstad
.
Criminal gang
A criminal gang may be:* Prison gang* Street gang* gangs within organized crime* Outlaw motorcycle club...
in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. Founded in 1993, it has its base in Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
and members in Halmstad
Halmstad
Halmstad is a port, university, industrial and recreational city at the mouth of Nissan in the province of Halland on the Swedish west coast. Halmstad is the seat of Halmstad Municipality and the capital of Halland County...
and Jönköping
Jönköping
-Notable people:*Lillian Asplund, RMS Titanic survivor*John Bauer, illustrator, painter*Amy Diamond, singer*Agnetha Fältskog, ABBA*Carl Henrik Fredriksson, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Eurozine*Anders Gustafsson, kayaker, Olympian...
, among other places, and is one of a handful of Swedish criminal gangs that have received significant media attention. Its leader and founder is Denho Acar
Denho Acar
Denho Acar , also known as Dano and Djingis Khan, is a Turkish mobster of Assyrian/Syriac descent and founder of the Swedish crime syndicate Original Gangsters.-Biography:...
, who fled Sweden in 2007. The current number of members is uncertain: Original Gangsters' own figures of some one hundred active were disputed by the Swedish police, which describe the gang as currently being significantly decimated..
The gang took its name from the term Original Gangster used by gangsta rap
Gangsta rap
Gangsta Rap is a subgenre of hip hop music that evolved from hardcore hip hop and purports to reflect urban crime and the violent lifestyles of inner-city youths. Lyrics in gangsta rap have varied from accurate reflections to fictionalized accounts. Gangsta is a non-rhotic pronunciation of the word...
per Ice-T
ICE-T
* Ice-T, an American rapper and actor* ICE T , a tilting model of the German InterCityExpress series of high-speed trains...
in 1991.
History
Original Gangsters was formed in the Gothenburg suburb BergsjönBergsjön
Bergsjön is a district in eastern Gothenburg, Sweden. On January 1, 2011, Bergsjön and Kortedala together became the Eastern District of Gothenburg, as a part of a larger reorganization of the City of Gothenburg where the number of district councils has been halved to ten. Bergsjön, as part of...
in 1993 by Denho Acar
Denho Acar
Denho Acar , also known as Dano and Djingis Khan, is a Turkish mobster of Assyrian/Syriac descent and founder of the Swedish crime syndicate Original Gangsters.-Biography:...
(alias "Dano" or "Djingis Khan") and two of his childhood friends. Denho Acar was born in Midyat
Midyat
Midyat is an originally Assyrian/Syriac town in Mardin Province of Turkey. The ancient city is the epicenter of a centuries-old Assyrian/Syriac enclave in Southeast-Turkey, widely familiar under its Syriac name Tur Abdin. A cognate of the name Midyat is first encountered in an inscription of the...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
in 1974, to Assyrian
Assyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
parents, and his family moved to Bergsjön in 1985. In 2007, Denho Acar fled to the tourist resort Marmaris
Marmaris
Marmaris is a port city and a tourist resort on the Mediterranean coast, located in southwest Turkey, in Muğla Province.Marmaris' main source of income is tourism. Little is left of the sleepy fishing village that Marmaris was just a few decades ago after a construction boom in the 1980s...
in Turkey since he was wanted for an arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
attack against a Gothenburg café. Being a Turkish citizen, Acar is able to avoid extradition while he remains in Turkey. Acar had never received Swedish citizenship, only a residence permit, and in August 2008, it was revoked.
Turkey-based Acar remains Original Gangsters' leader in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, but handed over the title of as the gang's "president" in Sweden in 2008. The extent of the gang's European activities outside of Sweden, which would be what Acar leads, remains somewhat unclear.
Interviewed for a 2007 book, Acar claimed that the number of members is around 100, with an inner circle of around 30. All members are men, and the gang's members have varying ethnical backgrounds: most are from countries where there have been significant immigration to Sweden, such as Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
(Assyrians
Assyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
), Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
or the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, but there are also many Swedish members.
The sign of membership is a tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
of the gang's symbol, which has been inspired by the Assyrian flag
Assyrian flag
The Assyrian flag is the flag chosen by the Assyrian people to represent the Assyrian nation in the homeland and in the diaspora.George Bit Atanus first designed the flag in 1968...
and shows the letters "OG" in the middle of a sun.
Conflicts with other gangs
A characteristic of the Original Gangsters which contributed to their media attention is their tendency to come into violent conflict with other criminal gangs.The first known large-scale violent conflict was in 2000, with the Naserligan
Naserligan
Naserligan , named after the leader Naser Dzeljilji, is a criminal gang in Sweden. It is primarily active in the Gothenburg area and has members of Albanian ethnicity. The criminal activities of the gang includes drug trafficking, gambling and protection racketing. Several persons in the gang are...
gang, the members of which was of Albanian
Albanians
Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...
extraction. The conflict was over profitable activities in Gothenburg, such as illegal gambling. However, there was also a background of a senior member in OG having stabbed two Albanian's in 1996, when they had been working as bouncers. Following the OG man's release from prison in February 2000, shooting between the two gangs erupted in May 2000 outside an illegal gambling place in Gothenburg, leading to two of the Albanians been wounded. The revenge came on June 4, 2001, when members of the Original Gangsters were targeted at a public bathing place (Näset) in Gothenburg, and a gunfight erupted among bystanders. One person of Naserligan received a chest wound during the shooting. Several violent events followed during the summer of 2001, including the serious wounding of an innocent 37 year old bystander in a night club where the two gangs collided. The shooting at bathing place did however lead to a police crackdown with two hundred arrests and fifty confiscated weapons during the following year, leading the two gangs to enter a truce.
Another conflict involved Original Gangsters and X-Team, a supporter club of Bandidos
Bandidos
The Bandidos Motorcycle Club, also known as the Bandido Nation, is a "one-percenter" motorcycle gang and organized crime syndicate with a worldwide membership. The club was formed in 1966 by Don Chambers in Texas. Its slogan is We are the people our parents warned us about. It is estimated to have...
. It was initiated by night club quarrel between the younger brothers' of the two gangs on June 15, 2002. Acars younger brother told an OG member by the name of Kotaran of the event, and he decided to murder the leader of the X-Team for what his younger brother had done. The following night Kotaran went to the X-Team leader's apartment, and took firing position in the flower arrangements outside. He identified a person which he shot dead with eight shots. The person he murdered was however not the X-Team leader, but his younger brother, i.e., the person actually involved in the quarrel the night before. This triggered a series of violent events between Original Gangsters and X-Team. Following another police crackdown on criminal gangs in western Sweden, the two gangs entered a truce in 2005, when X-Team was upgraded to a regular Bandidos club. This truce was however broken in July 2007 in Halmstad
Halmstad
Halmstad is a port, university, industrial and recreational city at the mouth of Nissan in the province of Halland on the Swedish west coast. Halmstad is the seat of Halmstad Municipality and the capital of Halland County...
.