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CRIME

Denmark’s infamous Femøren murderer appeals for release after 33 years

In 1984, Yugoslavian Naum Conevski murdered two youths at Femøren on the island of Amager in Copenhagen. The Danish High Court will on Monday begin its assessment of an appeal for his release.

Published: 2 October 2017 11:40 CEST
Denmark’s infamous Femøren murderer appeals for release after 33 years
Naum Conevski (centre) is arrested at Kastrup in 1984. File photo: Mini Wolff/Scanpix

After Copenhagen City Court rejected Conevski’s initial appeal to be released in May, the higher court will now assess the appeal of the former taxi driver, who wishes to return to Macedonia, reports Danish news agency Ritzau.

Conevski murdered two Danish teenagers who were camping at the Femøren area near the Amager beach on May 20th, 1984.

He ordered three friends out of the tent in which they had been sleeping before killing two, a 16-year-old and a 20-year-old, by shooting them in the head.

The third of the three young men, also aged 16 at the time, managed to escape despite being fired at.

Conevski was sentenced a year later to lifetime imprisonment following the cold-blooded crime, which left Denmark in shock.


The crime scene on Amager in 1984. File photo: Geert Bardrum/Scanpix

He was also convicted of attempted murder and several other serious crimes.

After serving over three decades of his sentence, the now 68-year-old double murderer wants to be released and sent to Macedonia, where his wife, children and grandchildren live, writes Ritzau.

This request was rejected by Copenhagen City Court in May, and Conevski’s appeal has now been referred to the higher Østre Landsret court.

The murder case received significant publicity in Denmark during the 1980s, not least because Conevski earlier in the decade had already been on trial after being charged with raping a woman who had travelled as a passenger in his taxi.

After initially being found guilty in that case, the Court of Appeal found a retrial necessary after a newspaper campaign raised doubts as to the then-Yugoslavian citizen’s guilt, writes Ritzau.

He was found innocent at the retrial just three months before the Femøren murders.

Conevski was later diagnosed as insane and was transferred to Denmark’s Sikringen special unit for dangerous mentally ill prisoners.

The decree declaring him dangerous was later lifted, and the 68-year- old is now detained at a secure wing of the St. Hans hospital in Roskilde. Assessments by doctors at that unit find him to have been stable for an extended period, according to Ritzau’s report.

The High Court will now decide whether that assessment is sufficient to justify his release. It is currently unclear when a final decision on the case will be made. 

READ MORE: Crime stories from Denmark

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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