The Attempted Assassination of Lars Hedegaard


Photo credit: ICLA

Regular readers need no introduction to Lars Hedegaard, the Danish free speech activist who has worked tirelessly for the Counterjihad for many years. He is the chairman of Trykkefrihedsselskabet (the Danish Free Press Society) and the editor of the newspaper Dispatch International (for which I do occasional editing).

This morning an attempt was made to assassinate Lars at his home in Copenhagen. If the assailant’s gun hadn’t jammed, I might have been writing Lars’ obituary instead of this report. As it is, Lars is unharmed, but in shock over what happened. The police believe two men were involved in the attempted murder, and both of them are still at large.

The Danish media have not hesitated to describe the culturally enriched appearance of the main attacker, and some reports describe him as a Pakistani. Danish television says that all politicians in the parliament are talking about the situation. Normal work has been suspended.

This brief notice was posted this morning at the International Civil Liberties Alliance website:

We have just received the shocking news that a gunman has tried to assassinate free speech campaigner Lars Hedegaard. Mr Hedegaard was awarded the ICLA Defender of Freedom Award at our conference in the European Parliament back in July 2012. A report can be found at Nyhederne.

A more comprehensive account was published by Citizen Times:

Danish historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard Jensen, chairman of the Danish Free Press Society recipient of the 2012 ICLA “Defender of Freedom Award”, today narrowly survived an assassination attempt without harm. Police are investigating the case urgently.

At 11:21, a man rang the doorbell at the private home of Lars Hedegaard, pretending to deliver a package. After having handed over the parcel, the man brought out a gun and fired two shots at Lars Hedegaard. Both shots missed, after which the gun jammed. After a short fight, the would-be assassin tried again to fire the gun, but when it still failed to function, the attacker fled and is still at large.

Lars Hedegaard, founder and chairman of the Danish Free Press Society and editor of the recently launched newspaper Dispatch International, has been brought to safety, while Danish police has deployed some 30 officers around his home searching for the perpetrator. He is thought to be 25 to 30 years old, Arabic-looking with dark hair, wearing a red, postman-style coat.

Political reactions condemning the attempt on a high-profile critic of Islam have been swift and firm.

According to the English-language The Copenhagen Post:

Islam critic survives assassination attempt

Assailant’s gun jammed after firing first shot – police now searching for two men wearing ski masks seen climbing into Copenhagen Zoo

The renowned anti-Islam journalist and scholar Lars Hedegaard reportedly survived an assassination attempt outside his home on Pelargonieviej in Frederiksberg this morning.

According to Ritzau, the assailant fled when his gun jammed after firing the first shot at around 11:20.

“A man shot at the victim but he missed and the bullet went over his head,” police commissioner Lars-Christian Borg told Ritzau. “When he tried to fire again, the pistol clicked and the assailant ran away.”

While Borg would not confirm the identity of the assassin’s target, a neighbour of Hedegaard’s told Politiken newspaper that he was the target.

“He told me that a man had approached him with a package and when he went to take it the man fired at him,” the neighbour told Politiken.

After first sealing off Hedegaard’s street, police have now also cordoned off Copenhagen Zoo after two men wearing ski masks were seen jumping over the wall to the zoo into the hippopotamus enclosure.

Berlingske newspaper reports that witnesses reported hearing what sounded like a gunshot at around 13:50.

Police say the man that fired the shot was wearing a red coat, is around 30 years of age and has dark skin and thick, dark hair.

Update: Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has issued the following statement about today’s events:

It is with utmost disgust and abhorrence that I condemn the cowardly, but thankfully failed, attack on my friend and colleague Lars Hedegaard, the brave Danish advocate of freedom.

This assassination attempt is once again a prime example that there can be no dialog between the adherents of the Islamic faith and the rest of us. The tenets of the Islamic faith demand that those speaking the truth about Islam and Sharia law must either convert or be killed. We must urgently realize at this point just how far our freedoms have been eroded: more and more no-go Sharia zones in both the UK and Denmark; assassination attempts on critics of Islam; lawfare against critics of Islam; all of which is aimed at silencing those who stand up for freedom of speech and Western liberal principles.

Make no mistake: we will not be silenced nor will we give in. We are resolved in our stand against the forces of evil. We are resolved to continue our quest to reassert our God-given rights. We are for freedom. We love freedom. We will not submit.

Additional news coverage of the story:

25 thoughts on “The Attempted Assassination of Lars Hedegaard

  1. Homeowners can’t have handguns to protect themselves in Copenhagen? But someone from Pakistan can smuggle in a weapon? Had this event happened in the U.S. the homeowner may have been able to fire back at the perpetrator. Highly suggest European homeowners install hidden cameras above their doorways. Especially those who speak out against Islam. Today is my 50th birthday. I predict a bloody revolution to expel radical Islam from Western societies within the next three decades. There can be no other alternative if politicians and law enforcement fail to do their jobs in eradicating the radical Jihadists who will use illegal guns, bombs, and explosives to kill the infidels.

    • I wish I could agree with you on the backlash within 3 decades, but
      sadly I feel that with the governments of all European countries except
      Greece against ANY form of patriotic activity, we will fade away
      without a whimper. There may be a handful of Breiviks, but the
      bovine and comfortable populations are already packaged for history.

  2. @Mo Brown
    No, you cannot own weapons in Denmark as such (without going into detail about the specific laws).
    And it is illegal for private persons to install cameras, hidden or not.

    • Not even a small size Louisville slugger baseball bat? How about a water pistol full of ammonia? Couple squirts in the eyes would have blinded the assailant. Yes, Lars was brave for throwing the package at the fake delivery man (Pakistani Muslim) and trying to wrestle him to the ground. A slingshot would also be a way to fight back silently. That’s what Europeans need to think about if a protest or revolt should take place. Creative ways to defend oneself. They also make glasses with both clear and shaded lenses that records HD video. Wear those in your non-violent protests and marches. Film the radical preachers and non-Muslim, infidel haters. Post on Youtube and Vimeo. I hope the Danes wake up and realize Islam is a totalitarian ideology that is not compatible with Western civilization. Do not tolerate the intolerable!

  3. Happy Birthday, Mo Brown.

    In the way this story unfolded, had Mr. Hedegaard been living in the U.S. and had he been armed, he’d have had to been pointing his weapon at the “postman” before he opened the door. Not to say that such folks don’t exist around here, but deliveries to their front doors don’t happen.

    As Mark Steyn has often pointed out, his little area of New Hampshire is safer because they do have good gun laws. Safer, that is, than the Canadian province from which he moved. Not all of them are gun phobes up there.

    Given that most low-life types prefer a sure thing, random lawlessness gives way before the uncertainty of whether or not the would-be victim is armed. Thus, where there is a strong social compact re gun ownership and use by average citizens, crimes against property and person are lower.

    BTW, notice that Mr. Hedegaard is physically brave: his response to being shot at was to wrestle with the man from Pakistan.

    A birthday present for you: I hope the police keep that fellow confined to the hippo cage to which he is said to have escaped. Or the panther cage at lunchtime.

    • Actually, the tigers in the Copenhagen Zoo have proven their man-killing skills. That was the 10th of July last year. Ehm, one day after Lars Hedegaard got the “Defender of Freedom” award in Brussels..?

  4. @NG
    You cannot install a camera for protection? Even such high profile people as Mr. Hedegaard? I bet politicians can and do have cameras, just as I am willing to bet that they have armed security…
    The western world is castrating itself while the ruling elite act like hogs.
    I am so sorry that Mr. Hedegaard has to live in fear. I support his work and his selfless dedication to it in the face of death.

  5. NG on February 5, 2013 at 2:15 pm said:

    “@Mo Brown
    No, you cannot own weapons in Denmark as such (without going into detail about the specific laws).
    And it is illegal for private persons to install cameras, hidden or not.”

    Well, NG, does this tell you any thing about whom we (or the Danes as in this case) are going to have to deal with first?

    Seneca III

  6. @NG
    Re: “You cannot own weapons in Denmark. It is illegal for private persons to install cameras, hidden or not.”

    How could the Danish people have possibly allowed that such state tyranny be imposed on them? Do they have no understanding what happens to a people that allows itself to be disarmed? The insane “no-camera” rule is just one more step in that dialectic. The state’s importing and unleashing Islamic Morlocks upon such a sheeple is the natural consequence.

    I do not mean to single out the Danes. But something has happened to all the European peoples, and they have just begun reaping the harvest of decades of folly and cowardice. BTW, BHObamerica is now following on the same path full steam ahead. And the parallels to the above Danish syndrome are already visible: for instance, in New York, which has just tightened its already draconian proscriptions against legal gun ownership (while ownership by criminals soars), the news today is that three people were stabbed on the subway, and flash mobs by the American version of Europe’s “youths” are now out of control.

    Never give up your natural rights.

    Takuan Seiyo

    • Hang on, regarding Danish laws:

      Cameras are permitted, as long as they do not cover public areas such as roads and sidewalks.

      And it is technically possible, though long-winded and difficult, to get a permission to have a gun in your home.

      • The issue is that it’s the citizens who are solely empowered to give the government explicit permission to restrict by government permission their natural right to self defense, rather than the opposite. It’s the idea of “enumerated powers” as iterated in the US Constituion, and that’s an idea that should be copied by all freedom-loving peoples. Of course, when the people’s vigilance fades, enumerated or not the government does whatever it wants, as it has in the US too, on and off since Roosevelt’s times.

        As to security cameras, obviously they are useless if they do not cover the immediately adjacent public space outside one’s residence. Again, the people have allowed that the government entrap them in a steel mesh of tens of thousands of laws, many absurd, and of late written on 1000 -2000 pages that our wise solons vote on and approve without having read them first…. though this probably manifest mostly at the large socialist entities like EUSS and USSA.

      • Hello Henrik hoped you would swing by.
        I don’t know if you read the comments, but is was as a protection, there is really no protection if you can’t put a camera up at your front door, how would you limit it?
        I don’t know if you remember the case about the guy who put a cam up in his backyard a few years back, and all the fuss about it, because it accidentally captured some public area as well?

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  8. I will try answering you all in one post, rather than replying to each of you.

    You cannot install a camera as a private person, if there is a risk of exposing other people without their consent. Not even in your own backyard. Banks can do it, police can do it. Business can do it.

    The Google street van stirred up quite a fuss, because technical it was illegal, actually I don’t know exactly how they ended up do it legal anyway, it is really a gray area. Maybe it’s changed, I just remember some cases years back.

    Kurt Westergaard has police protection, the danish PET, literally “police intelligence service”, a mixture of what America has split in NSA, Secret service, FBI, CIA etc, as well as the former leader of the Danish Peoples Party Pia Kjaersgaard, a opponent of Islam. (It should be noted that PET own main building has been targeted by left wing radicals, in an arson attack)

    Our prime minister is protected by PET as well, but that has nothing to do with critique or threats, it just as is.

    To understand everything fully what is happening in Denmark, you got to understand our history, values, politics, lifestyle and more. I don’t really understand everything myself.

    Denmark is a small country, and even though we have been “divided” over issues, we have had a consensus. A rather “progressive” consensus that is, but it began to crack when our “homogeneous (we are white, therefore we are guilty) population got the new and exciting possibility to experience other cultures first hand”, and to prove it: Lars Hedegaard himself was a former editor of a what best can be called a leftist ultra progressive (former communist) newspaper, in the late 80′. He “woke up” as a lot of other people in our “little paradise”.

    You would be surprised if you knew how regulated our lives are. You would be absolutely appalled. Other Danes might say “well it is not so bad”, but we really don’t know anything else, we more or less live in a society where the state is over you “from cradle to grave” as we say in danish.

    Denmark is a semi-economic-socialist-value-liberal nation. Once upon a time, we had trust, trust in each other, we knew we had at least something in common with everybody else, and that made everything bearable and you don’t need guns when you trust a stranger. That may sound strange, but we are a hardworking and good-hearted people, however not as in “a stranger is a friend”, we like our privacy. Some would say even naive at times. But when you have nothing, at all, in common with your neighbor and he [doesn’t care at all] about you and your values, trust simply begins to break down.

    But we, as a people are, funny enough, also the only few in Europe, who don’t really [care at all] about what other nations think of us, think of the cartoons, our stance at freedom of speech, while every american newspaper wouldn’t print them “because it could offend those-we-don’t-dare-offend”. Denmark, as I felt it back then, really stood alone in a sea of hypocrites, 5 million people vs. 1.6 billion and the rest of the world had always this funny statement “We support freedom of speech, BUT ….” . Fun fun fun (Sorry had to say it)

    What is happening to America, which we in Europe have endured for decades now, saddens me, but a necessary evil to wake the giant once more. If not… All is lost.
    Who should we fight first? Well that is a really good question. I don’t really believe in a “fight”. But I believe the populations of Europe are waking up. The (progressive) elites will fight this with everything at their disposal. For Odin’s sake, I just don’t hope they use physical force. But Mo Brown might be right about a fight with a lot of tears. Would just hope it doesn’t happen. And by the way happy birthday Mo Brown.

    Hope my semi-rant made any sense, at least in a few places. 🙂

  9. As Rahm Emmanuel, the eminence grise of Obama, is reputed to have said, “never let a crisis go to waste”. This case can lead to some initiatives. Who gave religious justification for the murder attempt? Who supported it in word or deed? Did any religious leader speak out against it?

    Maybe it is time to declare those leaders who publicly or privately support this type of violence to further their “faith” as being in rebellion against the State. They are a threat to the King’s peace, and should be incarcerated. Their followers should be expelled, and their assets seized. Indeed, a special exemption could be made and Sharia law should be applied in its full awfulness to them.

    A second question is whether such a “faith” deserves the protection
    provided to a religion in a Western country. The illegalization of certain sects may be a necessary option. The Pax Americana is over, and civilizational survival is going to require much more effort.

  10. NG – you hope it doesn’t come down to a fight. Well, we all hope that, and I hope to win the lottery this coming weekend, but then there’s the matter of reality to consider…

    I’ve read comments on these pages to the effect that Western man is now too complacent/comfortable/bovine to fight. Maybe but then again maybe not… Westerners (generally) are slow to anger, certainly, but that’s a good thing isn’t it? We tend not to fight over nothing, and the relative peacefulness of our countries gives the impression that we are unwilling to fight over anything. That’s not the case – we kind of need permission to fight, and at the moment political correctness and our law abiding behaviour and maybe also the lack of perceived threat amongst the majority combine to portray Western man as having lost the will to fight.

    And in this context Islam is its own worst enemy. It seems to be on a course, with its constant threats and acts of violence, of encouraging an ever greater number of Westerners to see it as a threat. And when the tipping point arrives, as it must, what then of the Westerners ‘unwillingness’ to defend his own corner?

      • Hi.

        Continue loading straw onto the camel’s back and eventually it will break. I’ve experienced my own tipping point in the sense that once upon a time I was a left-leaning liberal not too concerned about the immigration/Islam issue – my own eyes encouraged me to reject this ostrich naivete. And it seems that Mr. Hedegaard also experienced his own tipping point – I understand that he too was to the left on these issues at one time. And isn’t it the case that an increasing number of individuals are, through their own experience, rejecting the liberal one-world worldview – these individuals are the straws being piled on the back of the prevailing paradigm which if things continue as they are will eventually give way. Hence my belief that a tipping point must come. World views don’t last forever.

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