Assailant of Danish Prime Minister Arrested by Police
Centre-left winger Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Photo: EFE
June 8, 2024 Hour: 1:58 pm
On Saturday, the court in Frederiksberg (Denmark) ordered preventive detention, until 20 June, for a 39-year-old Polish citizen for assaulting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in central Copenhagen yesterday.
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“We see it as an isolated and spontaneous act, and at the moment we do not have as a hypothesis of our investigation that it was a planned attack against the Prime Minister “, said the inspector of the Copenhagen Police, Trine Møller, to the Ritzau agency after the restricted hearing held today.
The individual, accused of assaulting a public official, denied the charges during the hearing, and according to the police report, was clearly influenced by alcohol and other drugs when he was arrested, a minute after hitting Frederiksen in the arm and pushing her.
During the interrogation last night, the individual, who has been living in Denmark for a few months, admitted to having recognized Frederiksen and said he did not remember much of what had happened, but denied having beaten her.
In his statement today before the judge, the individual, who needed an interpreter, showed his sympathy for Frederiksen and assured that she was a “very good” prime minister. “At the moment our main hypothesis is not that it was politically motivated. We have no further comment on the case,” the police said on their account on X.
The PM was treated last night at the Hospital of the Kingdom of Copenhagen and diagnosed with a “mild whiplash”, reported the office of the prime minister so by this Saturday the planned participation of the prime minister in events in Herlev was canceled, Rødovre, Roskilde, Holbæk and Slagelse.
Frederiksen, 46, has been the head of government since June 2019: the first legislature, at the head of a centre-left coalition; and since December 2022, at the head of a centre-right executive.
Autor: ACJ
