Denmark's Prime Minister is attacked in Copenhagen: Man arrested as Mette Frederiksen is 'beaten' in the capital
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has been assaulted by a man in central Copenhagen earlier today.
Police said on social media platform X they had arrested a man and were investigating the incident but declined to give further detail.
Her office said in a statement: 'Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was beaten on Friday evening at the Kultorvet public square, a pedestrianized area, in Copenhagen by a man who was subsequently arrested. The Prime Minister is shocked by the incident.' She is suffering from whiplash.
A local, Soren Kjergaard, who works as a barista on the square, saw the prime minister being escorted away by security following the assault.
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen who was assaulted by a man in central Copenhagen
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a Nordic summit, in Stockholm, on Friday, May 31, 2024
The assault comes two days before Danes head to the polls in the EU election and just three weeks after Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico was seriously injured in an assassination attempt.
Mr Fico, 59, was shot in the abdomen as he greeted supporters last month outside a cultural centre in the town of Handlova, nearly 85 miles north-east of the capital Bratislava.
Video footage showed the Slovak premier approach people gathered at barricades and reach out to shake hands as a man stepped forward, extended his arm and fired five rounds before being tackled and arrested.
He later underwent two hours of surgery to remove dead tissue from his gunshot wounds.
[snippets from other news articles follow -AA]
An eyewitness Søren Kjærgaard who was working at Kulbar on Friday, said he saw the PM sit down with a friend before her security personnel rushed to ‘get her up'.
The assault took place on the public square in the centre of the city, where a man walked up to her and hit her.
Two witnesses, Marie Adrian and Anna Ravn, told local newspaper BT that they had seen the attack.
"A man came by in the opposite direction and gave her a hard shove on the shoulder, causing her to fall to the side," the two women told the newspaper.
They said that while it was a "strong push" the prime minister did not hit the ground.
She then sat down at a café, they added.
The assailant, attempted to flee but was quickly apprehended. Another witness observed the man lying on the ground with a security service member's knee on his back, appearing confused and slightly dazed.
The manager of a bar in the square told the Reuters news agency he saw Frederiksen walk away after the incident, escorted by security officers.
"Well, I saw the prime minister sitting with a friend at this table and just I think was one minute, two minutes afterwards, four PET (Danish national security and intelligence service) guys showed up, talked about an arrest has been made. And then she was escorted by the four PETs to some place around in the middle of the square and then escorted just a way around the corner," Soren Kjaergaard said.
German Social Democrat European Parliament Member Matthias Ecke was beaten by a teenager while campaigning in Dresden, Germany, requiring surgery.
German police on Tuesday reported an assailant stabbed Heinrich Koch, an Alternative for Germany candidate, with a box cutter in the southwest German city of Mannheim.
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