Stockholm Is Edgy Over Bikers' Party

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - The bikers say it's only a party. But Stockholm police are on alert because hundreds of Hells Angels are expected this weekend at the clubhouse of the MC Sweden biker gang.

The gathering has raised alarm that the peaceful Swedish capital - which so far has avoided the violence between the Hells Angels and the Bandidos in much of Scandinavia - is about to get embroiled in the feud.

"Police Fear Motorcycle Club War in Stockholm," read the front-page headline yesterday in the newspaper Expressen.

The three-year feud in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden has escalated in the past year into public shootouts and attacks with anti-tank grenades. Ten people have been killed and more than 50 injured.

The violence has included shootings at the international airports in Denmark and Norway, and a grenade attack on the Hells Angels compound in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

With that in mind, authorities are nervous about the party, which will run all weekend and draw an expected 200 Hells Angels from all over Europe. They are nervous, too, about the likelihood that the party will mark MC Sweden's being named a full-fledged Hells Angels chapter.

"We are concerned that we will have a new criminal organization," Stockholm police spokesman Claes Cassel said.

The bikers say they just want to have fun.

"This is only a completely ordinary party. Is that something to get heated up about?" MC Sweden member Johan Segui said in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper yesterday.

Cassel declined to say how many officers would be assigned to monitor the party, which will begin at the MC Sweden clubhouse in an industrial neighborhood but is expected to spread into the city's nightclubs.

The Bandidos do not have a chapter in Stockholm. But that doesn't preclude an attack.

Police say the feud, which apparently started with competition for drug markets, has become principally a matter of revenge.

"The Bandidos probably feel they need to kill a few more Hells Angels," said Per Jaldung of the national police force's biker task force.