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CRIME

Danish police arrest two over plot against minister

Plans to do Defence Minister Nicolai Wammen harm led police to arrest and charge two men.

Published: 26 March 2015 18:52 CET
Danish police arrest two over plot against minister
Defence Minister Nicolai Wammen. Photo: Jens Astrup/Scanpix
Danish police have arrested two men over planning an attack against the country's defence minister, Nicolai Wammen, local media reported on Thursday.
 
The two, of Somali and Pakistani origin, were detained when police on Wednesday searched a number of apartments in the Copenhagen area.
 
They faced preliminary charges of planning an attack against Defence Minister Nicolai Wammen, daily Ekstra Bladet wrote.
 
The tabloid said it had been in contact with one of the men, who were not being charged with terrorism but under a paragraph barring the "attacking or coercing of … the government or ministers."
 
Both were released from custody on Thursday.
 
Police declined to comment on the report, but lawyers Bjørn Elmquist and Andro Vrlic said they each had been asked to represent one of the suspects.
 
Elmquist told AFP that since there had been no request for a custody hearing, which is required in Denmark to jail someone for more than 24 hours, the charges "maybe aren't too serious".
 
The Danish defence minister has been under police protection since 22-year-old gunman Omar El-Hussein shot dead a filmmaker and an unarmed Jewish security guard outside a synagogue in twin attacks in the Danish capital on February 14 and 15.
 
The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) began a probe a few weeks ago "based on observations around Nicolai Wammen and his residence," Ekstra Bladet wrote.

CRIME

Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

Denmark’s government wants authorities to be able to move children out of families in which parents are gang members and is likely to formalise the measure in parliament.

Published: 9 April 2024 13:38 CEST
Danish government backs removing children from gang-connected families

The justice spokesperson with senior coalition partner the Social Democrats, Bjørn Brandenborg, told regional media TV2 Fyn that he wants authorities to have the power to remove children from their families in certain circumstances where the parents are gang members.

Brandenborg’s comments came on Monday, after Odense Municipality said it had spent 226 million kroner since 2009 on social services for eight specific families with gang connections.

“There is simply a need for us to give the authorities full backing and power to forcibly remove children early so we break the food chain and the children don’t become part of gang circles,” he said.

The measure will be voted on in parliament “within a few weeks”, he said.

An earlier agreement on anti-gang crime measures, which was announced by the government last November, includes provisions for measures of this nature, Brandenborg later confirmed to newswire Ritzau.

“Information [confirming] that close family members of a child or young person have been convicted for gang crime must be included as a significant and element in the municipality’s assessment” of whether an intervention is justified, the agreement states according to Ritzau.

The relevant part of November’s political agreement is expected to be voted on in parliament this month.

READ ALSO: Denmark cracks down on gang crime with extensive new agreement

Last year, Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told political media Altinget that family relations to a gang member could be a parameter used by authorities when assessing whether a child should be forcibly removed from parents.

In the May 2023 interview, Hummelgaard called the measure a “hard and far-reaching measure”.

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