COPENHAGEN — The shooting spree in Copenhagen by a radicalized former gang member has highlighted an overlap between Islamic terrorists and the criminal underworld.
Danish police say gang members with Muslim backgrounds are being radicalized both in prison and outside, and some have joined the ranks of foreign fighters in Syria.
“We know that some of the fundamentalist groups are fishing in that pond,” said Michael Ask, head of Denmark’s National Center of Investigation, “because they know that they have some young people who are vulnerable and rootless.”
Born in Denmark to Palestinian parents, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein had a long history of violence and crime before he went on a rampage last weekend, killing two people and wounding five in attacks on a free-speech event and a synagogue.
The 22-year-old, who was killed in a shootout with police, had been a member of “Brothas,” an inner-city immigrant gang in Copenhagen, but was reportedly kicked out because of his temper.
“He got into fights with members of other gangs. So when they wanted to make peace agreements with other gangs, they threw him out,” said Aydin Soei, a social worker who has been researching Denmark’s gang scene and who met El-Hussein in 2011.
Where and when El-Hussein was radicalized remains unclear. Prison authorities alerted the Danish domestic intelligence service, PET, last year while he was serving time for a stabbing, but the latter said there was no reason to think he was plotting an attack.
Already before the shootings, Danish authorities were concerned about gang members crossing over to Islamic terrorism.
In July, police informed lawmakers that among the scores of people who have left Denmark to become foreign fighters in Syria were at least five known gang members, and several others with a “peripheral relation” to street gangs.
“Some of them use it as an exit strategy,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College. “They leave criminal gangs for … a new identity.”
