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CRIME

Copenhagen serial rapist faces expulsion

UPDATED: A 25-year-old former refugee was found guilty on Wednesday of three kidnappings and rapes and two additional attempted rapes and will face indefinite imprisonment followed by deportation.

Published: 21 October 2015 12:37 CEST
Updated: 21 October 2015 15:37 CEST
Copenhagen serial rapist faces expulsion
The man was found guilty in Copenhagen City Court. Photo: Colourbox
The man that Copenhagen Police suspected was behind a series of rapes and attempted rapes in the capital was convicted on Wednesday. 
 
 
The court found the 25 year old, who came to Denmark in 2008 as a UN quota refugee, guilty of three rapes and two attempted rapes.
 
The man will be held in open-ended preventive custody and could also face expulsion from Denmark and an entry ban. 
 
He was sentenced to what is known as forvaring, a sentence with no concrete end date. Under the sentence, the convicted appears in court after a period of five years for a determination of continuation. After the initial five years, there will be an annual determination. 
 
The jury also ruled that if the man is released from prison he should be expelled from Denmark and face an entry ban. 
 
The man’s lawyer filed an immediate appeal against the court’s decision. 
 
According to TV2, the man was born in Congo but raised in Zambia. He lives with his Zambian wife and their children in the northern Copenhagen suburb of Holte. 
 
He is a trained home care professional and has also worked as an assistant for two handicapped boys. 
 
In a series of attacks dating back to July 2014, the man targeted women who were out alone after partying in the Copenhagen nightlife. All five of his female victims told police that he attempted to force them into a dark vehicle and then sexually assault them. 
 
The court was due to rule on the man’s mental health before issuing a sentence. 

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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