Trial Begins for Polish Man Accused of Assaulting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen

Trial of Polish Man Accused of Assaulting Danish Prime Minister Begins

The trial of a Polish man, charged with striking Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in June, has commenced. Notably, Frederiksen is not anticipated to be present at the court proceedings. The incident occurred on June 7th in central Copenhagen, resulting in a minor whiplash injury for Frederiksen, which forced her to cancel her schedule for several days.

According to the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet, the 39-year-old Polish man, whose identity has not been disclosed, is accused of delivering a punch to Frederiksen’s right shoulder with a clenched fist, causing her to stumble but not fall. During the court session at Copenhagen District Court on Tuesday, defense attorney Henrik Karl Nielsen stated that his client pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The accused, who has resided in Denmark for five years, told the court that he was “intoxicated by alcohol but not drunk” at the time of the incident. He claimed that he was merely wandering around when he encountered Frederiksen, as reported by Danish public broadcaster DR.

A police officer assigned to Frederiksen’s security testified in court, explaining that she had stopped to have a phone conversation when the man approached her and struck her after muttering something unintelligible. “In that moment, it appeared he was angry,” the bodyguard, referred to by his police number KF081, recounted, according to DR. The Polish man was swiftly apprehended following the assault.

Additional Charges: Sexual Harassment and Fraud

At the time of the attack, Frederiksen was taking a break from campaigning for her Social Democratic Party in the European Parliament elections. It is important to note that the assault was unrelated to the campaign event itself.

The accused has been in pretrial custody since the incident and faces several other charges, including:

• Sexual harassment for exposing himself to passersby and groping a woman at a commuter train station.
• Fraud involving the fraudulent return of deposit-marked bottles and cans at two grocery stores.

The man has admitted to these additional charges.

Mette Frederiksen, aged 46, has been the leader of the Social Democratic Party and Denmark’s Prime Minister since 2019. She has been at the forefront of the country’s response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and was involved in the controversial decision in 2020 to cull Denmark’s entire captive mink population to mitigate the risk of the virus spreading from these animals.

The trial is set to conclude on Wednesday, though it remains unclear when a verdict will be delivered. The assault occurred amid a worrying trend of violence against politicians in the lead-up to the EU elections. In a separate incident in May, a candidate from Germany’s centre-left Social Democrats was violently attacked while campaigning, resulting in serious injuries.

Moreover, in Slovakia, the political climate was further destabilized by an assassination attempt on populist Prime Minister Robert Fico on May 15th, which sent shockwaves throughout the nation and Europe at large. Fico suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen and was seriously injured, while the suspect was promptly apprehended and charged with terrorism.

Incidents of violence against politicians are relatively rare in Denmark; one notable occurrence happened on March 23, 2003, when two activists threw red paint at then-Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen inside the parliament building, leading to their immediate arrest.