Two men accused of helping Danish gunman to remain in custody

Two men detained on Sunday have been ordered to remain in custody for 10 days after being charged with aiding the suspect in the Copenhagen terror attacks.

A 22-year-old Danish-born gunman killed a film director and a young Jewish man at the weekend in Denmark’s most lethal terror attack in decades.

Michael Juul Eriksen, the defence lawyer for one of the detained men, said they were accused of helping the gunman evade authorities and get rid of a weapon during the manhunt that ended early on Sunday when the attacker was killed in a shootout with police.

The suspects, arraigned at a four-hour closed hearing on Monday, were accused of “having helped the perpetrator in connection with the shooting attacks”, Copenhagen police said.

Mr Juul Eriksen told reporters they deny the allegations.

The suspected gunman has been named in local media as Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein. He was reportedly released from prison a few weeks ago after serving a sentence for knife crime. Police did not confirm the name.

Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said there were no signs the gunman was part of a wider terror cell.

“This is not a conflict between Islam and the west,” she said. “This is a conflict between the core values of our society and violent extremists.”

She urged Jews not to emigrate despite a call from her Israeli counterpart Binyamin Netanyahu for European Jews to go to Israel following the twin attacks in the Danish capital.

"The Jewish community have been in this country for centuries. They belong in Denmark, they are part of the Danish community and we wouldn't be the same without the Jewish community in Denmark," she told reporters.

Attack

The first attack came at 3.30pm on Saturday afternoon during a debate about free speech in a cafe. It was attended by, among others, the French ambassador and Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who depicted the prophet Muhammad as a dog in a 2007 cartoon and whose life has been under threat ever since. Finn Nørgaard (55), a film director attending the event, was reportedly shot dead at close range after going outside for an unknown reason at the time the attacker struck.

The gunman fled the scene, but at about 1am he struck again outside the city’s central synagogue, on a narrow street in the heart of Copenhagen, shooting dead Dan Uzan (37), a Jewish security guard who was manning the door of a bat mitzvah party.

At dawn, the attacker was killed in a shootout on a quiet street in the traditionally working-class area of northwest Copenhagen, bordering the Nørrebro district.

On Sunday afternoon, police continued to search apartments and raided an internet cafe nearby as part of their investigation.

Past violence

The gunman was known to police because of past violence, gang-related activities and possession of weapons.

Jens Madsen, head of the Danish intelligence agency PET, said the gunman had perhaps been trying to stage a copycat attack of the three days of bloody mayhem in Paris last month. That attack began with a massacre of cartoonists and others at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended in a murderous siege at a kosher supermarket.

“We cannot yet say anything concrete about the motive but are considering that he might have been inspired by the events in Paris some weeks ago,” Madsen said.

Ms Thorning-Schmidt described the killings as “a cynical act of terror”. She said, “We have tried the ugly taste of fear and powerlessness which terror hopes to create.” She added that Denmark was living a day of sorrow but vowed: “We will defend our democracy and we will defend Denmark at any time.”

On Sunday, the European Jewish Association called for increased security of Jewish institutions across Europe. Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the general director, said EU leaders had not done enough to combat anti-Semitic attacks and prejudices in the run-up to the attacks on Saturday and in the early hours of Sunday, and pointed to a need to “secure all Jewish institutions 24/7”.