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CRIME

Danish war veteran charged with murdering his parents with axe

The 43-year-old former soldier who was arrested last summer on charges that he murdered his parents and then stored their bodies in his car was formally charged with murder on Thursday.

Published: 27 July 2017 15:05 CEST
Danish war veteran charged with murdering his parents with axe
Flowers left outside of the house of the suspect's parents. File photo: Bo Amstrup/Scanpix
East Jutland Police said that the man will also face charges of improper conduct with his parents' corpses.
 
Police announced on Thursday that criminal charges will now proceed against the 43-year-old. According to police, the reason it has taken over a year to move forward in the case is due to prosecutors’ request that the man be held in a secured psychiatric unit indefinitely. 
 
“When there is an assertion as serious as indefinite placement in [the psychiatric unit], it needs to go through a number of different authorities and that has taken some time,” senior prosecutor Birgitte Ernst said in a police press release. 
 
Ernst added that the “very extensive investigation” added to the long processing time in the case. 
 
The 43-year-old has been held in Sikringsafdelingen, Denmark’s only secured psychiatric ward, since his arrest. He was originally diagnosed as “acutely mentally ill or in a similar state”.
 
 
The former soldier is reported to have suffered with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after his active military duty. He is said to have served in Bosnia during the 1990s Yugoslav wars.
 
According to press reports following his arrest on July 12th, 2016, the man appeared confused and upset at his initial court appearance. 
 
Police say that the man killed both of his parents in their home in the town of Uggelhuse near Randers. He allegedly struck them numerous times in the head and body with an axe before then wrapping their bodies in plastic sacks and blankets and putting them in his vehicle. 

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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