Danish gunman ‘acted alone’

Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt has said there are no signs that the killed gunman behind attacks that left two people dead in Copenhagen was part of a wider terror cell.

However, she said the gunman’s choice of targets – a free speech event and a synagogue – suggests the assaults were acts of terrorism.

She underlined that “this is not a conflict between Islam and the West ... this is a conflict between the core values of our society and violent extremists”.

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Ms Thorning-Schmidt spoke on the same day two suspected accomplices of the gunman, named in Danish media reports as Omar El-Hussein, were held in custody for 10 days.

Danes mourned the two victims of the country’s first fatal terror attacks in 30 years, while some also put flowers at the spot where police killed the gunman.

The suspects arraigned yesterday were accused of helping the gunman evade authorities and getting rid of a weapon during the manhunt that ended early on Sunday when the attacker was killed in a shootout with a SWAT team.

Prosecutors had asked a judge to place them in four weeks of solitary confinement, and the relatively short period of detention – 10 days in custody – suggests the case against the men is “thin,” according to defence lawyer Juul Eriksen’s assistant, Anders Rohde.

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Mr Rohde spoke to reporters after a four-hour custody hearing held behind closed doors for the men, who were not named.

Two people were killed in the weekend attacks, including a Danish filmmaker attending a free speech event and a Jewish security guard shot in the head outside a synagogue in Copenhagen.

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