“We Are Danish” — Libération, Feb. 16, 2015
One month after the shootings in Paris that killed 17 people, a similar terror attack left two dead and five wounded in the Danish capital Copenhagen over the weekend. In the same way the world honored the victims and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with the “Je suis Charlie” slogan, the French daily Libération titled its front page Monday “Vi er Danskere” (“We are Danish,” in the Scandinavian language).
On Saturday, shots fired at a Copenhagen cultural center, where a conference on blasphemy and freedom of expression was taking place, killed one person and injured three police officers. Later, in the night between Saturday to Sunday, police say the same gunman killed a young Jewish man and wounded two police officers in a shooting attack at synagogue in the Danish capital.
Danish authorities said the alleged perpetrator of the attacks, Omar El-Hussein, a 22-year-old man born in Denmark, was shot dead Sunday by police forces. He has a past recorded of criminal offenses and gang-related activity.
“The Scandinavian kingdom, which has been under threat since the Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005, is faced with the failed integration of a youth tempted by radical Islam,” Libération writes.
According to the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet, Omar El-Hussein was released from prison just two weeks ago, after serving a sentence for assaulting a young man in Copenhagen for unclear reasons.
Danish intelligence services are currently working on whether the attacker was inspired by the Paris attacks. Early on Monday, police also arrested two men who may have helped the attacker prepare the shootings.
