Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
DANISH MUTILATION CASE IN SOUTH AFRICA

CRIME

Key witness in Danish genitalia case murdered

The wife of the Danish man accused of cutting off women’s sexual organs and storing them in his freezer was to be the prosecution’s star witness but now she’s been shot and killed.

Published: 22 October 2015 10:57 CEST
Key witness in Danish genitalia case murdered
The woman was killed in Meseru, the capital of her native Lesotho. Photo: OER Africa/Flickr
Just as South African police said that they had made a breakthrough in their investigation of Peter Frederiksen, a Danish man suspected to be behind a string of gruesome mutilations, the primary witness in the case was killed while waiting for a taxi. 
 
The South African news site Netwerk24 reported that 28-year-old Anna Matsiliso Molise was shot near her home in the Lesotho capital of Maseru on Tuesday. Police have ruled out a robbery as nothing was stolen.
 
“She died on Wednesday in Lesotho,” South African police spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi told AFP.  “We did offer her protection, but she refused. She was a key witness, but we still have other witnesses who will come forward.”
 
The South African news site News24 reported that Molise was shot four times.
 
“It is suspected to be a hit,” spokesperson Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi told the site. 
 
Molise was in the process of divorcing Frederiksen and was the one who initially put police on his trail. 
 
Molise was also reportedly a victim of Frederiksen’s genital mutilation and told police in mid-September that she had been drugged and attacked while unable to defend herself. 
 
Investigators then found 21 pieces of genitalia in the Dane’s freezer along with surgical tools, anaesthetic and a trove of photos documenting the macabre acts.
 
Earlier this week, South African police hailed a “preliminary breakthrough” in the investigation, saying that officials had identified some of his victims, which include a seven-year-old girl. Investigators also belive that some of the genitals may come from Danish women. 
 
Most of the victims however are believed to have come from Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa.
 
Frederiksen previously participated in a radio documentary for Danish public broadcaster DR in which he openly detailed performing genital mutilation on his African wife and her friends. 
 
He reportedly fled from Denmark to South Africa to avoid weapons charges and opened a gun shop in the city of Bloemfontein. 
 
Frederiksen has been held in police custody for nearly a month and will appear before a judge again on November 4th.
 
No arrests have been made in Molise's death. 

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