COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A Polish man was sentenced to four months in jail for assaulting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, local media said Wednesday, adding he will be expelled from the country.
The unidentified 39-year-old man has been charged with punching Frederiksen’s right shoulder with a clenched fist, causing her to lose her balance but not fall. Frederiksen suffered whiplash at the time.
Danish broadcasters DR and TV2 said the Copenhagen District Court issued the sentencing.
Frederiksen was on a private break from the Social Democratic Party’s campaign for the elections to renew the European Parliament when the assault took place on a busy downtown Copenhagen plaza. The 46-year-old prime minister, who has been in office since 2019, had been campaigning for her party's EU lead candidate, Christel Schaldemose, who was elected. The attack was not linked to the campaign event. The assault happened as violence against politicians in Europe spread in the run-up to the European Union elections.
The man, who has been held in pretrial custody since the assault, also faces other charges including sexual harassment by exposing himself to passing people and groping a woman at a commuter train station, and fraud involving deposit-marked bottles and cans at two supermarkets. He has confessed to those charges.
Prosecutor Anders Larsson had demanded four months in jail for assaulting the prime minister and for exposing his private parts to passing people, saying his sexual acts were not gross but “were certainly uncomfortable” for those seeing it, according to DR. “His behavior and demeanor are far removed from a citizen who should be in our society,” Larsson said in court, according to DR.
The Associated Press
