The defendant’s lawyer mentioned his consumer accepted the sentence however that the four-month jail time period was “slightly harsher than he feared.” File | Picture Credit score: AFP
A Danish court docket on Wednesday sentenced a Polish man to 4 months in jail and ordered his deportation for beating the nation’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, in June.
The 39-year-old man, whose identify can’t be revealed within the media, was arrested instantly after the assault, which befell on June 7 in a sq. in Copenhagen. “Now we have discovered you responsible of getting hit the prime minister with a closed fist on the fitting shoulder,” Decide Jacob Scherfig instructed the person on the finish of the trial on Wednesday.
The person, who has been residing in Denmark for 5 years, might be deported after serving his sentence and has been banned from re-entering the Scandinavian nation for six years.
Throughout the two-day trial, he denied any duty and mentioned he remembered coming nose to nose with the prime minister, whom he recognised however didn’t lay a hand on. He mentioned he believed his reminiscence loss was because of alcohol consumption and the shock of out of the blue discovering himself nose to nose with the prime minister.
Frederiksen, 46, underwent a medical examination after the incident and was recognized with a “contusion to the fitting shoulder and a minor whiplash damage,” his workplace mentioned on the time. The person was convicted of violence towards a public official. He was additionally convicted of a number of counts of indecent publicity and fraud associated to different incidents.
Neither the prosecution nor the protection referred to as Frederiksen as a witness in the course of the trial, because the prosecution argued that they may current a powerful sufficient case with out her testimony.
The defendant’s lawyer, Henrik Karl Nielsen, mentioned his consumer accepted the sentence however that the four-month jail time period was “a bit harsher than he had feared.” “He was calm, however after all he was disillusioned that the jail time period was 4 months,” Nielsen mentioned. AFP.
Nielsen added that it was unclear how a lot of the sentence was associated to the assault on the prime minister and the way a lot was as a result of different fees.
– Secure streets –
The Pole, who has already spent two months in pre-trial detention, will serve one other two months in a Danish jail earlier than being deported. Frederiksen grew to become Denmark’s youngest prime minister when she was elected in 2019, aged 41. She might be re-elected in 2022.
The assault was extensively condemned by main European politicians. European Fee chief Ursula von der Leyen referred to as it a “despicable act that goes towards every little thing we consider in and battle for in Europe.”
The assault follows a sequence of assaults on European politicians throughout the political spectrum forward of the European Parliament elections in June. On 15 Might, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot 4 instances at point-blank vary as he greeted supporters after a authorities assembly. A number of politicians in Germany have been attacked at work or throughout election campaigns.
“We would like a society the place everybody, together with prime ministers, can stroll down the road safely and calmly with out being harassed by others,” mentioned particular prosecutor Anders Larsson. AFP earlier than Wednesday’s verdict.