AN 18-year-old Swede has been arrested over the shooting of a renowned Marbella plastic surgeon in an apparent contract killing.
Dr Alexander Aslani, 57, the German-born founder of Cirumed Clinic, was shot dead a little before 6pm on Wednesday, October 7, when a hooded gunman dressed in black walked into his office on the eastern edge of Marbella and shot him several times in the head.
Policia Nacional officers arrested the suspect at around 6pm on Thursday, about 24 hours after the shooting, after he had apparently escaped on a motorbike.
Police sources told news website El Español that everything points to a female patient, or someone in her circle, having ordered the killing, and that investigators have gone through the profiles of the clinic’s female clients one by one, among them relatives of drug traffickers.
If a hired teenager is confirmed, the killing would fit a pattern of teenage hitmen in Spain that Europol, the EU’s police agency, has been warning about: criminal gangs using social media and messaging apps to recruit boys, often from Scandinavia or the Netherlands, and sending them to the Costa del Sol to kill for cash.
It is a pattern that has already produced one murder, two foiled hits and the arrest of an alleged arms supplier.
From Fuengirola to Orihuela
Until this week, the only murder in Spain linked to a teenage hitman was the shooting of a 25-year-old Dutchman outside a cannabis club in Fuengirola, where he worked, in the early hours of December 7, 2024.
The gunman, a Belgian boy aged under 18 at the time who was allegedly contracted in the Netherlands and handed an assault rifle smuggled from Paris, dumped the weapon under a parked car and escaped on a bicycle, while investigators now believe the victim was not the intended target.
Dutch and Belgian nationals took part in the plot, with three Dutch women accused of carrying the weapon across borders and a Dutch man accused of ordering the killing from abroad.
The Belgian teenager was caught in Belgium and sent to Spain, but was released after reaching the maximum time a minor can be held and was later re-arrested in Belgium, with Dutch authorities now seeking to try him in the Netherlands.
Other plots have been stopped before a shot was fired, among them a youth from Gothenburg who was arrested in Benalmadena in 2024 within hours of flying in, still carrying shopping bags and instructions for a hit.
In a separate case, a Swedish boy was intercepted last summer riding an e-scooter towards his target in Malaga at midnight.
Both have been traced to a 16-year-old from Malmo who ran a recruitment operation from his home in Alicante, where his father and stepmother were allegedly in on the scheme, and who was convicted in July 2025 of recruiting other teenagers for hits in Sweden, Denmark and Spain.
Using Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram and Signal, he lured youngsters with promises of money and status.
More recently, in July, police arrested a Swedish man at his home in Orihuela, accused by Swedish prosecutors of arms trafficking and by Spanish police of supplying weapons and ammunition used in gang shootings and bombings in Sweden.
Why gangs want teenagers
Europol says criminal groups now openly advertise killings and shootings on Telegram, Signal and Snapchat, offering quick money to teenagers while the people giving the orders stay out of sight, with Malaga police putting the going rate at around €5,000 a job.
Senior officers say the tactic is deliberate, because minors are easier to manipulate, face lighter sentences and put distance between the gangs and the killings.
It has pushed Europol to launch a multinational task force with police in Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and other countries, and in one operation Danish and Swedish officers arrested seven suspects aged between 14 and 26, including two 18-year-olds accused of recruiting other minors.
“Teenagers being paid to pull the trigger – this is what organised crime looks like in 2025,” Andy Kraag, head of Europol’s Serious Organised Crime Centre, said last year.
Danish police inspector Torben Svarrer put the other side of the bargain bluntly: “The reality is far less lucrative than promised, and the consequences can be severe.”
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