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Europe tries to reassure Jews after attacks

European nations scrambled on Monday to reassure their Jewish communities after deadly attacks in Copenhagen that heightened fears of a new surge in anti-Semitic violence.

Published: 16 February 2015 18:35 CET
Europe tries to reassure Jews after attacks
Flags were at half-mast throughout Denmark on Monday. Photo: Bax Lindhardt/Scanpix
Flags were flying at half-mast across Denmark after the weekend shootings on a synagogue and a cultural centre that stunned one of the world’s most peaceful nations.
 
The suspected Danish gunman, who was shot dead by police Sunday, was identified as a 22-year-old of Palestinian origin with a history of violent crime.
 
Two men were charged on Monday with aiding the gunman, named by the media as Omar El-Hussein, in his lone rampage in the Danish capital that left two people dead and five policemen wounded.
 
France, which was rocked by Islamist attacks last month that killed 17 people including four Jews, appealed for national unity to combat “Islamo-facism”.
 
 
Danish intelligence said El-Hussein may have been inspired by the Paris attacks against a kosher supermarket and satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo that published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
 
Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt pledged to protect Denmark’s small Jewish community and urged them not to answer an Israeli call for Jews to flee Europe for the Jewish state.
 
“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.
 
She vowed that Denmark would not be intimidated by the weekend’s shootings, the deadliest such attack in the nation’s history.
 
“This is a conflict between the core values of our society and violent extremists,” she said. “I want to underline that this is not a conflict between Islam and the West. This is not a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims.”
 
The gunman was said by the media to have been released from prison just two weeks ago after serving a term for aggravated assault — raising fears he may have become radicalised behind bars.
 
Two suspects were charged with helping him get rid of his weapon and giving him somewhere to hide, the lawyer of one of the men, Michael Juul Eriksen, told AFP.
 
But he said the unnamed men denied the charges “completely”.

CPHSHOOTING

Copenhagen terrorist had Quran during attacks

Nearly one year after gunman Omar El-Hussein killed two people Copenhagen, new details have emerged about the terror attack.

Published: 8 February 2016 09:05 CET
Copenhagen terrorist had Quran during attacks
The fact that Omar El-Hussein was in possession of a Quran when shot by police was kept secret for nearly a year. Photos: Københavns Politi; Kristian Brasen/Scanpix
Radio24syv revealed that Omar El-Hussein, a Danish citizen of Palestinian origin, was carrying a copy of the Quran when he was shot and killed by police in the wee hours of February 15, 2015, information that had been kept secret by Danish authorities.
 
According to the radio station, at the time of his death El-Hussein had a Quran on him with a bookmark at Surah 21, ‘The Prophets’, which contains verses about disbelievers of Islam. 
 
A theologian and expert on the Quran at the University of Copenhagen said that although one cannot definitively prove that the 22-year-old El-Hussein was inspired by the scripture, the location of the bookmark could be significant. 
 
“One can imagine that El-Hussein considered his actions to be a continuation of the the Quran's verses on punishing the wicked,” Thomas Jøhnk Hoffmann told Radio24syv.
 
An official report on the February 14-15 terror attack – in which El-Hussein first fired at least 30 shots at a free speech event, killing one, and then killed a volunteer security guard outside of Copenhagen’s Great Synagogue –  made no mention of the gunman’s Quran. 
 
The Danish National Police declined to comment to Radio24syv on why the information wasn’t included, saying that “the involved authorities gave a description that was as precise as possible” in their report. 
 
Former Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET)head Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen said that withholding the information made little sense from a practical standpoint. 
 
“I have a hard time seeing that it would have been out of consideration for the investigation. But it could be that one did not want to contribute to equating Islam with terror and that one wanted to guard against revenge attacks in the days after [the twin shootings],” he told Radio24syv
 
El-Hussein was born in Copenhagen to Palestinian parents who fled to Denmark via a refugee camp in Jordan. Just two weeks before he spread terror through the Danish capital, the 22-year-old was released from prison for a stabbing offence. 
 
It was behind bars that El-Hussein is thought to have become radicalized. He was on multiple occasions flagged up by prison authorities for expressing “extreme” views on Islam and at one point shared a cell with an inmate who openly supported the Islamic State, but PET said that it had “no reason to believe that the now deceased 22-year-old offender was planning attacks” based on the information from the Danish Prison and Probation Service. 
 
In addition to the revelation about El-Hussein’s Quran, TV-2 also reported that seven of the 21 shots fired by police and security guards from within the targeted Krudttønden cultural cafe got stuck in the cafe’s window as the gunman opened fire on a free speech event from the outside. 
 
It is unknown if the shots were unable to pierce through the windows because of inadequate ammunition or because of the angles from which the shots were fired, but a Danish People’s Party spokesman said that the revelation is proof that Danish police were ill-prepared for a terror attack. 
 
“The police should have been ready to withstand a terror attack, and they clearly were not prepared. Denmark has been high on the list of countries that terrorists want to attack, so it is thought-provoking that officers didn’t have ammunition that could shoot through glass. It seems completely useless,” Peter Kofod Poulsen told Politiken.