Man charged with orchestrating five murders

Copenhagen Police have filed charges against a 22-year-old man who allegedly participated in planning five murders.

A man has been charged with five counts of recruiting mainly Swedish teenagers to commit murders in Denmark in exchange for payment, Copenhagen Police announced on Friday.

Some of the young people who traveled by plane or train to Denmark last spring and summer were only 15 and 16 years old.

The accused organizer is 22 years old and has been in custody for several months. Now the prosecution has decided to bring a case against him in court.

In all five cases, he is accused of recruiting young people, in particular, for the dangerous tasks. They were promised large sums of money.

The 22-year-old denies any guilt, but the prosecution believes it can prove that he was the organizer in relation to the planning of murders in Lind near Herning, at the biker club Comanches’ clubhouse in Brøndby and on Amager.

The phenomenon of primarily young Swedes being hired to commit serious crimes is called “crime as a service” by the authorities – that is, crime on demand.

Since April last year, the police have registered more than 20 such cases in total, it has previously emerged.

In several cases, judgments have already been handed down in the district court against the arrivals, emphasizes prosecutor Alexander Scheel from the Copenhagen Police in a press release.

Now it is the turn of a suspect who, from behind the scenes, is said to have played the role of organizer of the crimes.

“The 22-year-old, according to the police and the prosecution, was a step higher up in the system and arranged these criminal acts to order,” says Alexander Scheel.

The crimes were part of a conflict between several gang groups, the prosecution claims.

Therefore, charges have also been filed under a special section on gang rape in the Criminal Code. It can trigger a higher sentence.

Under a cover name on the encrypted communication service Signal, he is said to have made contact with the young people. They then received regular messages about how they were to be given firearms and where they were to live.

One case concerns two Swedish girls with guns who showed up at an address in Lind near Herning early in the morning of June 10th last year. However, the intended victim was not at home.

Three other cases involve three Swedish boys aged 15 and 16 who were arrested on different dates in April last year near Copenhagen Central Station, at Copenhagen Airport and in the Northwest Quarter of Copenhagen.

Finally, the 22-year-old is accused of having played a crucial role when two men were arrested at a hotel on Amager in July. The two – a 31-year-old Swedish man and a 19-year-old Polish man – were supposed to shoot one or more members of the gang at a kiosk, the prosecution claims.

ritzau