2 charged for helping Copenhagen gunman
Print Edition
Two men were charged in Copenhagen yesterday with helping the gunman who killed two people in twin weekend attacks that have stoked renewed fears of Islamist and anti-Semitic violence in Europe.
Flags were flying at half-mast across Denmark after the shootings that stunned one of the world’s most peaceful nations.
The suspected attacker, gunned down by police in a pre-dawn shootout on Sunday, was identified as a 22-year-old Dane with a history of violent crime who had only been freed from jail two weeks ago.
Danish intelligence said the gunman, who killed two people in attacks just hours apart at a cultural center and a synagogue, may have been inspired by last month’s Islamist attacks in Paris.
“A new type of war,” thundered the right-wing Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which had itself sparked violent protests across the Muslim world after publishing cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.
Two suspects were charged yesterday with helping the Copenhagen attacker get rid of his weapon and giving him somewhere to hide, according to the lawyer of one of the men, Michael Juul Eriksen, said.
Several media identified the gunman as Omar El-Hussein, who was said by the Ekstra-Bladet tabloid to have been released from prison two weeks ago after serving a term for aggravated assault — raising fears he may have become radicalized behind bars. Investigators said the man, who was born and raised in Denmark, had a history of assault and weapons offenses.
In a killing spree that bore a striking resemblance to the Paris attacks, the gunman first fired off a volley of bullets outside the Krudttoenden center on Saturday afternoon during a panel discussion about Islam and free speech. Documentary maker Finn Norgaard, 55, was killed.
In the second attack in the early hours of Sunday, the gunman opened fire outside the synagogue during a bar mitzvah, killing a Jewish man named as Dan Uzan, 37, who was guarding the building.
Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, meanwhile, sought to reassure Danish Jews, urging them not to emigrate despite a call from her Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu for European Jews to go to Israel following the twin attacks.
“The Jewish community have been in this country for centuries. They belong in Denmark, they are part of the Danish community and we wouldn’t be the same without the Jewish community in Denmark,” she told reporters yesterday.
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