Denmark attacks: Two men charged in Copenhagen

Danish police have accused two men of helping the gunman who murdered two people in separate attacks in Copenhagen.

The suspected gunman, named by Danish media as Omar El-Hussein, 22, was shot dead by police after he attacked a free speech debate and a synagogue.

A film director and a Jewish man were killed and five police wounded.

The two men are charged with providing and disposing of the weapon, as well as with helping the gunman to hide.

Michael Juul Eriksen, a defence lawyer for one of the men, said they denied the charges.

The suspects, who have not been named, appeared in a closed custody hearing on Monday.

Omar El-Hussein, the Danish national suspected of carrying out Saturday's attacks, was known to police and had convictions for violent offences and dealing in weapons.

The head of Danish intelligence, Jens Madsen, said investigators were working on the theory that he could have been inspired by the shootings in Paris last month. The attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, a kosher supermarket and a policewoman claimed 17 lives.

El-Hussein was released from prison two weeks before the attacks after serving a two-year sentence for grievous bodily harm, Danish media reported.

'Gang activities'

Denmark's foreign minister, Martin Lidegaard, rejected suggestions that El-Hussein may have visited the Middle East but said he may have been radicalised while in prison.

"We are not talking about a foreign fighter who has been abroad fighting in Syria or Iraq," Mr Lidegaard said.

"We are talking about a man who was known by the police due to his gang activities, his criminal activities inside Denmark. Whether he has been radicalised inside jail where he was just released from or he has been moving around in these environments before is as yet rather unclear."

In the first of the two shootings on Saturday, at a free-speech debate in the east of the city, film director Finn Norgaard, 55, was killed.

In an audio recording of the shooting, the gunman can be heard interrupting the debate and firing dozens of shots.

Hours later, Dan Uzan, a 37-year-old long-time member of Copenhagen synagogue, was shot dead while on security duty outside the building. Eighty people were celebrating a girl's bat mitzvah, or coming of age, in a hall behind the synagogue at the time.

The gunman fled by car but was traced by police to the city's Norrebro district. He opened fire when confronted and was fatally shot by officers.

The condition of the five police officers wounded in the attacks is unknown.

Denmark and France remain on high alert.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday that the deployment of thousands of police and soldiers at sites across the country, imposed after the January attacks, would stay in place "as long as the threat remains so high".

Source: BBC News