Danes Won’t ID Four Copenhagen Synagogue Terror Suspects

Copenhagen
ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images

Four men, held in connection with twin gun attacks in Copenhagen last year, were on Wednesday charged with a terror offence, the justice ministry said.

“Justice Minister Soren Pind decided today to charge four men with complicity in an act of terrorism over the attack on the Copenhagen synagogue in February last year,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that the trial would get underway on March 10.

On February 14, 2015, a Danish national of Palestinian origin opened fire on a cultural centre in Copenhagen which was hosting a debate on freedom of expression.

A Danish filmmaker was shot dead in that attack.

The 22-year-old assailant Omar El-Hussein then killed a 37-year-old Jewish man outside a synagogue before being shot dead in an exchange of fire with police.

Five suspected accomplices aged from 19 to 31, were arrested in the aftermath of the attacks.

Four were charged Wednesday [who cannot be named under a court order] and the fifth was released from custody last month.

The targets of the Copenhagen attacks, the freedom of expression debate centred around cartoons of the prophet Mohammed and a synagogue, drew comparisons with the jihadist attacks in January last year when the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket were targeted.

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