In a few weeks, it will be 10 years since the terrorist attacks on the Krudttønden Cultural Center and the Krystalgade Synagogue in the Danish royal capital. The attacks followed a month after the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo editorial office in Paris. While the anniversary of the latter received appropriate international headlines, the Danish event deserves its own observance.
On February 14th and 15th, 2015, two unarmed Danish citizens were killed when Copenhagen was hit by two consecutive terrorist attacks perpetrated by the same person—a 22-year-old man of Palestinian descent, born in Denmark.
First, the Lars Vilks Society’s panel discussion “Art, blasphemy, and freedom of expression,” held at Copenhagen’s Krudttønden Cultural Center and café, was interrupted by gunfire from the terrorist’s semi-automatic weapon. Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who since 2007 had faced numerous death threats for caricaturing the Islamic prophet Muhammad, was one of the speakers. While Vilks was whisked away by security, film director Finn Nørgaard––a member of the liberal Social Democrats, who actively contributed to suppressing freedom of expression in the cultural sector––shot dead and three police officers were injured.
Some nine hours later, the terrorist proceeded to a synagogue in Krystalgade in central Copenhagen, where a bat mitzvah was underway, attended by numerous children. During this attack, a volunteer synagogue guard was killed and two police officers injured.
The reaction from the official authorities in Denmark in the wake of the attack can be summarized as follows:
The unthinkable has happened. A peaceful little country, a model democracy, has been hit by terror. Two innocent civilians are dead. One for freedom of speech, the other for defending his community. They are heroes. The police and intelligence services have done their work selflessly and admirably. We are determined to stand up for our values. We insist on protecting our freedom. We stand shoulder to shoulder. Muslims, Jews, Christians (in that order). We stand together as Danes.
It is important to emphasize that posterity’s memory of the terrorist attack relies on weightless, shallow statements like the ones above rather than on facts. Because tidy falsehoods pose a bigger obstacle to facing the truth than outright repression, we ought to revisit the events of February 14-15, 2015, and expose how their memory has been distorted for political ends.
First of all—Denmark was not hit by terror out of the blue.
In 1985, two firebombs exploded in Copenhagen, at the American Airlines office and a synagogue. One person was killed and 27 others injured in the attack carried out by a Palestinian terror cell based in Sweden.
In 2005, Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the Muhammad cartoons had shaken Denmark and the world, an unprecedented event that drove another nail in the coffin of freedom of expression in the West. Ironically, the cartoons were all about freedom of expression, criticism of Islam, and self-censorship. The publication of the 12 caricatures of Muhammad was followed by protests, diplomatic demands from Muslim countries, death threats to the cartoonists, and violent riots around the world.
Then, a decade of threats and thwarted attacks and assassination plots by Islamists followed, primarily aimed at cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Jyllands-Posten.
In January 2015, Islamists murdered 13 people in the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
Yet, a month later, when the Copenhagen terrorist struck, Danish police and intelligence services appeared unprepared.
At the time of the incidents, current Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was Minister of Justice and bore the political responsibility for the police’s decision to remove the armed guard from the Krudttønden at the Lars Vilks event. When one of the wounded intelligence agents was asked about the reason for removing the armed guard, he said if they hadn’t, “we would just have just lost a few colleagues”.
After the shooting at Krudttønden, the Jewish Community contacted the intelligence services for help. It took about three hours before the police sent two officers to the synagogue—officers who had not had any firearms training for over a year and a half.
The killing of the guard at the synagogue could have been avoided if the terrorist had been stopped immediately. Justice Minister Mette Frederiksen and Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt in the wake of the attack both said that they had sent reinforcements to the synagogue right after the first shooting—a brazen lie on live television. An apology from the highest political levels would be a step in the right direction toward healing the wounds.
The role and responsibility of Danish police have never been investigated but rely solely on their own account of events.
The terrorist, who before the attack was serving a prison sentence, was known by the Prison and Probation Service to have been radicalized during his prison term. After his release, he obtained the semi-automatic weapon used in the attacks 14 days later.
What about the bereaved families? How does the Danish State support the victims’ relatives? Danish law is very reluctant to compensate victims of terrorism. This led to the 2015 creation of the Finn Nøregaard Association (in memory of the victim of the Krudttønden terror attack), which fights for other relevant cases too. This includes compensation for journalist Daniel Ryge, who in 2013-14 was held hostage for 13 months in Syria and whose family had to raise the DKK 10 million ransom, and the family of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, who was beheaded by Islamists in Morocco in 2018.
The association’s second purpose, as stated in its statutes, is “in Finn’s spirit to promote human understanding and dialogue among disadvantaged children and youth.” This is a euphemistic way of saying that the Association is working on a voluntary basis to prevent Muslim youth from Islamist radicalization by offering multicultural programs, seminars, and so on. The association also awards prizes and grants to volunteers with successful initiatives.
Ironically, in 2024, the Finn Nørgaard Award was given to volunteers at the controversial Kærshovedgård deportation centre. The centre houses rejected asylum seekers who have been convicted of a serious crime or are considered a danger to Denmark’s security. In July 2024, eight people convicted of terrorism were living at Kærshovedgård.
What is the justification for doing humanitarian work with terrorists waiting to be deported from Denmark? Why spend resources on criminals who reject everything the West offers them—except free welfare? And what sort of useful message could such a naïve humanism send to a Danish society that has been led to embrace unreciprocated altruism towards the “New Danes” and the image of multicultural society for decades?
The upcoming 10th anniversary of the double terrorist attack in Copenhagen in February 2025 may offer insights intothese questions, at least in terms of rhetoric. Will collective memory once again be dulled by sentimental phrases about “love triumphing over hatred” and “solidarity overcoming division”? If so, it will perfectly reflect the post-traumatic syndrome of Western societies, which lulls vigilance into narcissistic complacency and cowardly self-abandonment. Only time will tell.
10 Years After the Terror Attacks Denmark Still Needs a Harsh Reality-Check
People lay flowers for the shooting victims outside the “Kruttoende” cultural centre in Copenhagen, Denmark on February 15, 2015.
Claus Bjorn Larsen / AFP
In a few weeks, it will be 10 years since the terrorist attacks on the Krudttønden Cultural Center and the Krystalgade Synagogue in the Danish royal capital. The attacks followed a month after the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo editorial office in Paris. While the anniversary of the latter received appropriate international headlines, the Danish event deserves its own observance.
On February 14th and 15th, 2015, two unarmed Danish citizens were killed when Copenhagen was hit by two consecutive terrorist attacks perpetrated by the same person—a 22-year-old man of Palestinian descent, born in Denmark.
First, the Lars Vilks Society’s panel discussion “Art, blasphemy, and freedom of expression,” held at Copenhagen’s Krudttønden Cultural Center and café, was interrupted by gunfire from the terrorist’s semi-automatic weapon. Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who since 2007 had faced numerous death threats for caricaturing the Islamic prophet Muhammad, was one of the speakers. While Vilks was whisked away by security, film director Finn Nørgaard––a member of the liberal Social Democrats, who actively contributed to suppressing freedom of expression in the cultural sector––shot dead and three police officers were injured.
Some nine hours later, the terrorist proceeded to a synagogue in Krystalgade in central Copenhagen, where a bat mitzvah was underway, attended by numerous children. During this attack, a volunteer synagogue guard was killed and two police officers injured.
The reaction from the official authorities in Denmark in the wake of the attack can be summarized as follows:
It is important to emphasize that posterity’s memory of the terrorist attack relies on weightless, shallow statements like the ones above rather than on facts. Because tidy falsehoods pose a bigger obstacle to facing the truth than outright repression, we ought to revisit the events of February 14-15, 2015, and expose how their memory has been distorted for political ends.
First of all—Denmark was not hit by terror out of the blue.
In 1985, two firebombs exploded in Copenhagen, at the American Airlines office and a synagogue. One person was killed and 27 others injured in the attack carried out by a Palestinian terror cell based in Sweden.
In 2005, Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the Muhammad cartoons had shaken Denmark and the world, an unprecedented event that drove another nail in the coffin of freedom of expression in the West. Ironically, the cartoons were all about freedom of expression, criticism of Islam, and self-censorship. The publication of the 12 caricatures of Muhammad was followed by protests, diplomatic demands from Muslim countries, death threats to the cartoonists, and violent riots around the world.
Then, a decade of threats and thwarted attacks and assassination plots by Islamists followed, primarily aimed at cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Jyllands-Posten.
In January 2015, Islamists murdered 13 people in the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
Yet, a month later, when the Copenhagen terrorist struck, Danish police and intelligence services appeared unprepared.
At the time of the incidents, current Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was Minister of Justice and bore the political responsibility for the police’s decision to remove the armed guard from the Krudttønden at the Lars Vilks event. When one of the wounded intelligence agents was asked about the reason for removing the armed guard, he said if they hadn’t, “we would just have just lost a few colleagues”.
After the shooting at Krudttønden, the Jewish Community contacted the intelligence services for help. It took about three hours before the police sent two officers to the synagogue—officers who had not had any firearms training for over a year and a half.
The killing of the guard at the synagogue could have been avoided if the terrorist had been stopped immediately. Justice Minister Mette Frederiksen and Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt in the wake of the attack both said that they had sent reinforcements to the synagogue right after the first shooting—a brazen lie on live television. An apology from the highest political levels would be a step in the right direction toward healing the wounds.
The role and responsibility of Danish police have never been investigated but rely solely on their own account of events.
The terrorist, who before the attack was serving a prison sentence, was known by the Prison and Probation Service to have been radicalized during his prison term. After his release, he obtained the semi-automatic weapon used in the attacks 14 days later.
What about the bereaved families? How does the Danish State support the victims’ relatives? Danish law is very reluctant to compensate victims of terrorism. This led to the 2015 creation of the Finn Nøregaard Association (in memory of the victim of the Krudttønden terror attack), which fights for other relevant cases too. This includes compensation for journalist Daniel Ryge, who in 2013-14 was held hostage for 13 months in Syria and whose family had to raise the DKK 10 million ransom, and the family of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, who was beheaded by Islamists in Morocco in 2018.
The association’s second purpose, as stated in its statutes, is “in Finn’s spirit to promote human understanding and dialogue among disadvantaged children and youth.” This is a euphemistic way of saying that the Association is working on a voluntary basis to prevent Muslim youth from Islamist radicalization by offering multicultural programs, seminars, and so on. The association also awards prizes and grants to volunteers with successful initiatives.
Ironically, in 2024, the Finn Nørgaard Award was given to volunteers at the controversial Kærshovedgård deportation centre. The centre houses rejected asylum seekers who have been convicted of a serious crime or are considered a danger to Denmark’s security. In July 2024, eight people convicted of terrorism were living at Kærshovedgård.
What is the justification for doing humanitarian work with terrorists waiting to be deported from Denmark? Why spend resources on criminals who reject everything the West offers them—except free welfare? And what sort of useful message could such a naïve humanism send to a Danish society that has been led to embrace unreciprocated altruism towards the “New Danes” and the image of multicultural society for decades?
The upcoming 10th anniversary of the double terrorist attack in Copenhagen in February 2025 may offer insights intothese questions, at least in terms of rhetoric. Will collective memory once again be dulled by sentimental phrases about “love triumphing over hatred” and “solidarity overcoming division”? If so, it will perfectly reflect the post-traumatic syndrome of Western societies, which lulls vigilance into narcissistic complacency and cowardly self-abandonment. Only time will tell.
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