Copenhagen Attacks: Police Charges Two Men

Danish police say two people detained on Sunday have been charged with aiding the man suspected of the Copenhagen terror attacks.

A 22-year-old Danish-born gunman killed a film director and a young Jewish man at the weekend in Denmark’s most lethal terror attack in decades.

“The two men are charged with helping through advice and deeds the perpetrator in relation to the shootings at Krudttönden and in Krystalgade,” the police said in a statement, referring to the location of the two attacks.

The suspect in the attacks – named in local media as Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein – was shot dead by police. It was reported that he was released from prison a few weeks ago after serving a sentence for knife crime. Police did not confirm the name.

The first attack came at 4pm on Saturday afternoon during a debate in a cafe about freedom of speech attended by, among others, the French ambassador and Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who drew the holy prophet Muhammad in a cartoon in 2007. Finn Nørgaard, 55, a film director attending the event, was reportedly shot dead at close range after going outside for an unknown reason at the time the attacker struck.

The gunman fled the scene, but at around 1am he struck again outside the city’s synagogue on a narrow street in the heart of Copenhagen, shooting dead Dan Uzan, 37, a Jewish security guard who was manning the door of a bat mitzvah party.

At dawn, the suspected gunman was killed in a shootout on a quiet street in the traditionally working-class area of north-west Copenhagen, bordering the Nørrebro district.

On Sunday afternoon police continued to search apartments and raided an internet cafe nearby as part of their investigation.

Denmark’s spy chief, Jens Madsen, said the gunman, who was known to police because of past violence, gang-related activities and possession of weapons, had perhaps been trying to stage a copycat attack of the three days of bloody mayhem in Paris last month which began with a massacre of cartoonists and others at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended in a murderous siege at a kosher supermarket.

“We cannot yet say anything concrete about the motive … but are considering that he might have been inspired by the events in Paris some weeks ago,” Madsen said.

Denmark’s centre-left Social Democrat prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, described the killings as “a cynical act of terror”.

She said: “We have tried the ugly taste of fear and powerlessness which terror hopes to create,” and added that Denmark was living a day of sorrow. “We will defend our democracy and we will defend Denmark at any time,” she vowed.