Men charged over Copenhagen attacks

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 people wounded.

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

A defence lawyer said the men denied the charges.

The suspects, who have not been named, were due to appear before a custody hearing on Monday.

The man believed to have carried out Saturday’s attacks was known to police and had convictions for violent offences and dealing in weapons.

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

Hours later a 37-year-old Jewish man named as Dan Uzan, was shot dead while on security duty outside a nearby synagogue. 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 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.

Mr Madsen said police were also working to determine whether the man had travelled to Syria or Iraq.