COPENHAGEN — The slain gunman behind two deadly shooting attacks in Copenhagen was released from jail two weeks ago and might have become radicalized there last summer, a source close to the terror investigation said Monday.
Two Danish sources close to the investigation said the slain gunman was named Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Copenhagen police have not named the gunman. The sources said he was a 22-year-old Dane with a history of violence and gang connections. Several media organizations already have named him.
One source said El-Hussein had been in pretrial detention for a long time but was released two weeks ago. He also said the corrections authority had alerted Danish security service PET last year after it noticed worrisome changes in El-Hussein’s behavior. He wouldn’t give specifics but said such alerts are issued when inmates change their attitude or behavior in way that “sets off alarm bells.”
PET spokeswoman Lotte Holmstrup declined to comment on the report.
PET director Jens Madsen on Sunday confirmed that the gunman was known to the agency before the weekend attacks in Copenhagen that killed two people and wounded five police officers. He said the gunman may have been inspired by last month’s terror attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris that killed 17 people but did not elaborate on when his agency began tracking him.
The news about the suspected gunman came as Danes mourned the victims of the country’s first fatal terror attacks in 30 years — and, in an unusual development, some also put flowers on the street at the spot where police killed El-Hussein. The prime ministers of Denmark and Sweden joined thousands of people at memorials Monday evening in Copenhagen.
While a Danish court on Monday jailed two suspected accomplices of El-Hussein’s for 10 days, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt insisted there were no signs the gunman had links to a wider terror cell.
