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CRIME

Gang member sentenced to 20 years in prison, deportation for attempted murder of police officers

A member of Danish organised crime group Loyal to Familia (LTF) has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the attempted murder of two plain-clothed police officers whom he confused for members of a rival gang.

Published: 17 December 2018 13:30 CET
Gang member sentenced to 20 years in prison, deportation for attempted murder of police officers
File photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

Copenhagen City Court also sentenced the 20-year-old man, a national of Pakistan, to deportation.

The convicted man’s identity has not been made public due to potential appeal procedures. He was born and raised in Denmark and has a two-year-old child, Ritzau reports.

The incident for which he was found guilty occurred in September 2017, when two shots were fired from a motorcycle towards two men in the back yard of a building in the Mjølnerparken housing area in Copenhagen.

The two men were police officers and were sitting in an unmarked police car.

The prosecution authority found that the shots were fired because the attacker mistakenly thought the men to be members of a rival gang named Brothas.

The case was trialled by jury, with 11 members finding in favour of a 20-year sentence and one voting for an 18-year sentence.

Monday’s sentencing follows a guilty verdict being reached in the trial on Wednesday last week, when three others were acquitted of planning to kill the two persons in Mjølnerparken.

One of the three, 20-year-old Ekram Yavuz, was, however, found guilty of possessing firearms and threatening behaviour. He was given five and a half years in prison and did not appeal the sentence.

Danish criminal law allows harsher punishments for certain crimes if they are committed in connection with gang activity.

READ ALSO: UN concerned over Denmark's plan to banish foreign convicts to deserted island

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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