[8] The bikers utilized car bombs, machine guns, hand grenades, anti-tank missiles and small arms during their gang war, and assassination attempts were even made inside prisons.

[24] Commander Troels Ørting Jørgensen of the Danish police told the Canadian journalists Julian Sher and William Marsden in a 2006 interview: "No one has ever done a sociological investigation as to why in this small, extremely peaceful country of Denmark we have so many chapters of outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Biker gangs in the region previously consisted of locally bounded single chapters which later merged ("patched over") into the Hells Angels (HAMC) and the Bandidos as they sought protection in more powerful clubs.

The Hells Angels arrived in 1980 and gradually established dominance over the Scandinavian biker scene, before smaller clubs banded together and began forming Bandidos chapters in 1993 in order to resist forced amalgamation by the HAMC.

[35] Police then carried out a high-profile raid, using a Patria Pasi armored personnel carrier and a Super Puma helicopter, on Overkill's headquarters in Tapulikaupunki, Helsinki on 3 March 1993, arresting five people.

After violent encounters between the French Bandidos and Hells Angels, American executives from both clubs met in Paris in the late summer of 1993 and signed a non-aggression pact in order to avoid police and government countermeasures that could prevent their expansion.

[32] However, the criminologist Joi Bay criticised this assumption, saying that the police tactics were ineffective because they were based on the incorrect premise that the motivation of the bikers was profit, while in fact they were driven by values such as honor, style, respect, and brotherhood, and any drug crimes were incidental.

[45] In retrospective interviews in 2014, involved bikers rejected the drug-trade dispute interpretation and said the war started from a purely personal confrontation when the small Morbids club, with only six members, refused to capitulate to the larger Hells Angels.

[41] The clubhouse was targeted again the following week when, on 26 January 1994, Malmö Hells Angels chapter president Thomas Möller fired a high-caliber submachine gun from the roof of a van, resulting in a Morbids member losing a finger.

[49] The first major theft of weaponry occurred on the night of 20 February 1994 when the Bandidos broke into an armory in rural Sweden to steal 16 shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets along with hundreds of hand grenades, pistols, rifles and crates of ammunition.

The HAMC mother chapter in Oakland summoned Thomas Möller to a meeting where the club's leader Sonny Barger declared that, while the Paris pact marked Sweden as Hells Angels territory, the agreement was one of non-aggression.

[75][38] The Danish Hells Angels "South" chapter clubhouse in Snoldelev was hit with an anti-tank missile shortly after midnight on 17 April 1996, destroying the upper floor of the structure but causing no injuries to the sixteen bikers inside.

[65] Four hours later, the headquarters of the HAMC support club Avengers MC in Nørresundby near Aalborg was struck by another missile, causing minor damage as the projectile embedded itself in an interior wall without exploding.

[76] On 26 April 1996, imprisoned Bandidos "Southside" chapter vice-president Morten "Træben" ("Wooden Leg") Christiansen was left in critical condition with shrapnel wounds and burns when assailants threw a hand grenade into his cell after breaking into Horserød State Prison by cutting a large steel padlock securing the gate of the perimeter fence.

[79] Brian "Bremse" ("Brake") Paludan Jacobsen, a member of the Hells Angels' Copenhagen chapter, lost a leg and two associates were also wounded when two hand grenades were thrown into his home in Brønshøj from a passing vehicle on 7 May 1996.

[61] A six-kilogram remote-controlled bomb hidden in a sports bag was placed in front of the Hells Angels' clubhouse in Nørrebro, Copenhagen but failed to explode when the radio-controlled trigger malfunctioned, potentially saving the lives of four bikers in the building as well as residents of the street, on 21 July 1996.

[54] On 25 July 1996, a team consisting of between two and four men infiltrated Jyderup State Prison and fired over twenty rounds from an automatic weapon into the cell of Jørn "Jønke" Nielsen, a senior member of the Hells Angels' Copenhagen chapter.

[34] The biker war reached its crescendo on 6 October 1996 when the Copenhagen Hells Angels chapter's annual "Viking Party", held at the club's Nørrebro headquarters and attended by around one-hundred-and-fifty people, was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade.

[94] The missile exploded after penetrating the building's concrete walls, killing two people – Hells Angels prospect Louis Linde Nielsen and Janne Krohn, a single mother from the local area who accepted an invitation to the event – and wounding nineteen others, including HAMC Denmark national president Christian Sass Middelboe [da].

[105] The Hells Angels again attempted to kill a jailed rival by firing an anti-tank missile into a police cellblock in Holbæk on 18 February 1997, destroying two cells but leaving a Bandido and another inmate unhurt.

On the orders of the Hells Angels' Oslo chapter president, Torkjell Alsaker, Screwdrivers MC members detonated a thirty-to-fifty kilogram van bomb outside the entrance of the Bandidos' headquarters in Drammen on 4 June 1997, reducing the building to rubble and killing Irene Astrid Bækkevold, a fifty-one-year-old woman who was passing in her car.

[118] In 1992, the nations of the European Union formed a customs-free and visa-free zone of 376 million people with the purchasing power of $11 trillion US dollars, making the EU into one of the world's largest economic units.

[119] A joint task force was established as a result of the Nordic Biker War, with police in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden cooperating with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The Danish Parliament doubled the maximum penalty for illegal possession of weapons to four years' imprisonment, and also gave the police new powers to carry out phone tapping and house searches when occupants are away.

[138] In response to the changing criminal landscape, the leaders of the Bandidos and HAMC formed their own affiliated street gangs which serve as recruitment pools and carry out street-level crimes on behalf of the clubs.

[139] On 21 March 2001, former Bandidos member Claus Bork Hansen was shot twenty-six times and killed in Vanløse, Copenhagen after returning from a restaurant visit with his girlfriend, porn star Dorthe Damsgaard [da].

During the trial, it emerged that the Bandidos and Hells Angels held a crisis meeting on the street in front of a café in Sankt Hans Torv in Nørrebro two evenings before Hansen was shot dead.

The twelve jurors and three magistrates also decided that he should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital when the Judicial Council determined he was mentally ill. On 15 January 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that his sentence should be reduced to sixteen years in prison.

[145][146] Bandidos associate Flemming Jensen was beaten, stomped and stabbed to death after getting into a fight with a group of Hells Angels members at a tavern on Jomfru Ane Gade in Aalborg on 12 August 2001.

The following day, a hundred bikers – including Michael Rosenvold, who succeeded Jim Tinndahn as Bandidos Europe president – were arrested as police raided eighteen locations across Zealand in an attempt to assert control ahead of a what they believed to be an imminent gang war.