A car rolls into the parking lot of the fast food restaurant Prinsdal Grill on a late January evening in 2020. Four young men from Mortensrud get out of the car and enter the fast food restaurant. On the other side of the road, in another car, a 20-year-old man is masking himself. He has a loaded firearm. At 23.50 it happens. On the way to the car in the car park, the four young men are met by the 20-year-old. – Morrapulere, he shouts according to the district court’s verdict. A fatal shot is fired. The bullet hits 21-year-old Halil Kara in the temple. State prosecutor Irlin Irgens described the murder as an execution. Four young men were convicted of murder and complicity in murder. This is one of several ongoing conflicts in Oslo’s underworld. The “nameless” Before, the gangs in Oslo had members from different places in the city. They had clear names such as the A and B gang and Young Guns. It has changed. Now it is where you live that determines which criminal environment you are part of. It often starts as gangs of friends where some are criminals. And they use the postal code, or part of it, as a kind of name. These postcodes are fronted in social media and in music videos. Here, what looks like drugs, money and Mortensrud’s postcode are shown in a music video. Credit: Z4sta – Motorola. Director: Monz El M. Video taken from YouTube. The police have monitored eight such conflicts in criminal environments in the east and south of Oslo. There have been 41 incidents ranging from murder to threats in the past five years. – Some are about revenge and some are about territorial conflicts over drug sales, says John Roger Lund. He is the police chief for the districts in Groruddalen, Østensjø, Nordstrand and Søndre Nordstrand. The police also talk about a “toll scheme” that affects some young people. They must ask for permission to enter other districts. In England, such local gangs have been behind stabbings, drug sales and murders for several years. The media there have called the conflicts the postcode wars. Less structure, fewer leaders and more groups In the so-called “postcode gangs” in Oslo, there is often a different structure than in the more established gangs. Einar Haakaas, who has written the book “Warning: Swedish conditions in Norway”, thinks so. He is a writer and has worked as a journalist in Oslo for many years. Haakaas says they rarely have one clear leader. The gang structure is flat. This makes it easier for individuals to break away from the group. – It’s a bit like the rest of working life; you get a contract for a job, and then you disappear when the job is done. Then you get a number of “one-man enterprises” that take on assignments for criminal networks. Haakaas believes that these “one-man enterprises” also create their own small groups. The police call it criminal networks, since they have loose connections and not a traditional gang structure. But it’s not just on the streets that conflicts happen. Pupils from different criminal networks can end up at the same school. And then conflicts can arise. – We may experience that people from one district who start at a school in another district exercise territorial power inside a school, says John Roger Lund of the Oslo police. news has used both independent, anonymous sources and the police to survey some of the conflicts and environments. These are the postcode conflicts in Oslo Back to the murder of Halil Kara in 2020. The previous summer there must have been a tense atmosphere between people from Holmlia and Mortensrud at the Holmlia Festival. In the district court, both the accused and witnesses told about tinning at the festival. Seven months later, 21-year-old Kara was killed outside Prinsdal Grill. The environment at Mortensrud has a long-term conflict with the environment at Holmlia, the district court wrote when the verdict was handed down. The Mortensrud community, which uses the name 1281 or 281, consists of more than 50 people. This is according to sources for news. Previously, Mortensrud and Holmlia were the same gang that went by the name Young Bloods. But due to internal conflicts and disagreements, the gang was split up. Two men were sentenced to five and a half years in prison for the grossly negligent murder of Halil Kara. After this murder, 281 allegedly took revenge by, among other things, beating up, threatening and stealing drugs from people in the community at Holmlia, sources tell news. The following year, people at Mortensrud were shaken by yet another murder. 20-year-old Hamse Hashi Adan was shot and killed at Lofsrud school. Two brothers from Bærum are wanted internationally for the murder of Adan. The brothers escaped to Kosovo and it is uncertain where the brothers are now. The police seized a firearm from a person wearing a bulletproof vest at a shopping center on Mortensrud last year. This happened after the murder of Adan. The accused told the police that he went with a firearm to protect himself. Photo: Police news’s sources claim both murders are due to the same conflict and believe the wanted brothers have links to Holmlia. They also fear that revenge actions against criminals from Holmlia will escalate in the future. But also in another part of the city, further west, there is shooting. Tuesday evening 30 August this year. It is late summer and people are sitting on the outdoor terrace of a bar in Torshovgata in Oslo. They have no idea what will unfold just a few meters from them. Suddenly there is a bang several times. People in a car are shot at by others from a passing car. The bar guests escape into the nightclub. The police believe the shooting is a settlement in criminal circles. Sources news has spoken to believe that the criminal community 578 from Tøyen is behind the shooting at Torshov. The environment at Tøyen is small and has up to 15 people. According to the police chief, the youngest people in this environment are of secondary school age. They are also not well organized. – They don’t necessarily have one leader, but there can be three or four people who set the tone, says Soldal. A few days after the shooting at Torshov, shots were fired again from a car at others in another car. This time at Sandaker. news’s sources link these events together. They say that a criminal group from Bjølsen has stolen a large batch of hashish from an apartment in the center of Oslo. This hash should have belonged to criminals from the 578 environment. And the shootings are said to have been a direct response to the theft. Currently, a man in his 20s has been charged and remanded in custody, but only for the shooting at Sandaker. Both shootings are still under investigation by police. Here, no one is hit by the shots. Another shooting at Trosterud has a different outcome. The people in the 675 environment at Haugerud and Trosterud are in conflict with Furuset. They sell weapons and drugs, sources tell news. The same sources believe that criminals from Furuset were behind the shooting at Trosterud last summer. Two young men are shot in a residential area. They are found with gunshot wounds in the entrance to a block of flats in Trosterud. The injuries are serious, but not life-threatening. After the shooting, one said in an anonymous newspaper interview that they were shot because they were brown-skinned. Our sources believe this shooting must have been about a conflict with the 1051 environment from Furuset. The matter has not yet been resolved and is under investigation. The police say they have received unusually few tips. The Furuset grouping will consist of almost 30 people. They want to sell drugs in Trosterud and Haugerud, sources tell news. The sources also believe that they should be in conflict with Stovner. There it is also about Furuset wanting to take over the area to sell drugs. The free zone in the center It is not only in the east and south of Oslo that drug sales and conflicts are visible. In the center of Oslo and parts of Greenland, drug sales take place in daylight and late into the night. The areas in Greenland where drug sales take place are called “Gøtke” and “GT”. While the center is called “J-Town” and “City”, our sources say. Drugs are sold here outside the Goethe Institute in Greenland. The area is called “Gøtke”. Photo: Siv Johanne Seglem / news Greenland and the center a kind of free zone where “everyone” can come to sell drugs. One does not have to be from a specific environment. – Our opinion is that there is more freedom in who wants to sell, says Tore Soldal, head of police in the central unit. According to Soldal, conflicts constantly arise when people from different criminal networks meet each other in Greenland or in the city centre. – Much of the violent crime we see in those environments is in connection with such conflicts. Hello! Do you have thoughts about the case you’ve read, or tips about other cases? Feel free to get in touch!
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These are the violent “postcode conflicts” in Oslo – news Oslo and Viken – Local news, TV and radio
