Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Danish man in Nigerian prison over deaths of wife, child

A Nigerian court has remanded a Danish man in prison for allegedly murdering his wife and three-year-old daughter in their upscale Lagos residence, police said Thursday.

Published: 12 April 2018 16:38 CEST
Danish man in Nigerian prison over deaths of wife, child
A 2007 file photo of Lagos. Photo: Sunday Alamba/AP photo/Ritzau Scanpix

Peter Nielsen, 53, appeared before a court in Yaba, a suburb of Lagos, on Wednesday to face a two-count charge of killing his wife, Zainab, and their daughter, Petra, on April 5th, a senior police officer told AFP.

“The chief magistrate ordered that Nielsen should be remanded in Ikoyi prison pending legal advice from Lagos state director of public prosecution on a proper trial in the high court,” he said.

The officer said the suspect had hit his wife's head against the wall several times, inflicting fatal injuries.

The police officer said Nielsen later poisoned his daughter and tried to cover up the murders as a domestic accident.

Zainab, a 37-year-old singer popularly known as Alizee, was a rising Nigerian star.

The case, which has generated media attention and publicity in Nigeria, a country where domestic violence is receiving more attention, has been adjourned to May 8th.

Last month, the Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode led a march against domestic violence in support of a 25-year jail term for rapists.

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”.

SHOW COMMENTS