The intrepid, erudite journalist/historian Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, whose free speech travails I have written about here, miraculously survived an assassination attempt earlier today in a Copenhagen suburb.
According to the English version of the Copenhagen Post, police commissioner Lars-Christian Borg, stated
A man shot at the victim but he missed and the bullet went over his head. When he tried to fire again, the pistol clicked and the assailant ran away.
The initial description of the events that transpired, including details curiously omitted thus far from the mainstream media accounts, have been posted at Tundra Tabloids:
Someone calls on Hedegaard’s door (he lives in the apartment building in Frederiksberg). A man says he has a package for Hedegaard. Hedegaard goes down (or shut the man up to his door?) to receive the package. There is a young Arabic-looking man aged 20-25 years. Hedegaard receives the packet, then the man pulls a gun and shoots twice. He misses. So he shoots allegedly again, and the gun clicks … Hedegaard throws the package and the gun falls to the floor. After the scuffle the gunman grabs the gun again. And again he tries to shoot, and the gun clicked for the second time. Then the gunman runs away …
Moreover, as Mark Steyn points out the AP hack coverage of the story omitted Hedegaard’s 7-0 acquittal by the Danish Supreme Court regarding the alleged offense of “degrading Muslims”:
Incidentally, the slapdash hack at the Associated Press can’t even get the basic facts right, reporting that Lars was “fined 5,000 kroner ($1,000) in 2011 for making a series of insulting and degrading statements about Muslims,” but apparently unaware that last year the Danish Supreme Court struck down his conviction 7–0.
This unanimous decision in Hedegaard’s favor was rendered despite Denmark’s less than robust free speech protections, relative to those in the US, as highlighted by The Legal Project’s Ann Snyder.
Hedegaard, understandably shaken, is slated to be interviewed later this week, and will provide his own account of the attack.
At any rate, thank goodness, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt condemned the attack, in a sanity-sparing statement, reported by the BBC:
It is even worse if the attack is rooted in an attempt to prevent Lars Hedegaard using his freedom of expression.
