Denmark attacks underscore links between criminal gangs and extremism

The combination is lethal and becoming all too familiar: a long criminal record, easy access to weapons, a loathing of the countries where they were born and deep-seated anti-Semitism.

So it was with the perpetrators of the Paris attacks. Now, it appears to fit the description of the man who killed two people in Denmark at the weekend. Danish police describe him as 22 years of age, born in Denmark, with a violent past, connections with gangs and weapons offenses.

Jens Madsen, head of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), said investigators were “operating under a theory” the attack could have been inspired by last month’s attacks in Paris, which were also aimed at cartoonists.

Carsten Ellegaard Christensen, national security reporter at the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, told CNN the gunman was on the radar of Danish police and PET for gang-related activity but not extremism, according to his security sources. The gunman had recently spent time in jail for a knife attack.

In 2010, one counterterrorism expert, Michael Taarnby, told CNN that out of Denmark’s population of some 18,000 Somalis, there were at least 300 sympathizers of Al-Shabaab, the jihadist group in Somalia that is now an affiliate of al Qaeda.

“Those attracted are usually quite young — there’s the usual issue of a clash of cultures, of being stuck between east Africa and Scandinavia and not knowing where they belong,” Taarnby told CNN.

That clash of cultures threatens to shed more blood on the streets of Europe’s major cities.

CNN