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CRIME

Female jogger left ‘near death’ in Copenhagen attack

A 29-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder and rape for an attack on a female jogger in Copenhagen.

Published: 17 August 2016 09:13 CEST
Updated: 17 August 2016 14:41 CEST
Female jogger left 'near death' in Copenhagen attack
The woman was found near a football field in Østerbro some nine hours after the attack. Photo: Ida Guldbæk/Scanpix
The 38-year-old woman left her home between 4.30 and 5am for a jog in the city’s Østerbro district. When she didn’t return, her family contacted police. Officers searched for the woman but she wasn’t found until over nine hours later when a family member discovered her behind some bushes at a football field shortly before 3pm.
 
She was taken to Copenhagen's Rigshospital and put in a medically induced coma. By Tuesday evening, officials said she was out of critical condition. 
 
Police appealed to the public for help on Tuesday night and by early on Wednesday morning they had arrested a 29-year-old man who was seen in the area of the attack on surveillance video. 
 
Copenhagen Police spokesman Hans Erik Raben told Ritzau news agency on Wednesday afternoon that the man has been charged with attempted murder and rape. 
 
Police said that the female victim was found battered and partially unclothed. 
 
“She was near death when she was found,” Copenhagen Police spokesman Torben Svarrer said. 
 
Ritzau reported that police believe the man attempted to strangle the woman after hitting her numerous times in the head and face. She is believed to have been raped after losing consciousness, police said. 
 
Svarrer told TV2 news that video footage showed that the man “was in the area of the crime scene” at the time of the attack.
 
“That, and his behaviour on the video surveillance, led us to arrest the man early this morning,” he said. 
 
Police did not detail how they identified and tracked down the man, saying only that he was arrested “somewhere in Copenhagen”. 
 
No details about the man's identity or nationality have been released but Ritzau reported that a Greenlandic interpreter was called to the preliminary hearing. 

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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