Copenhagen: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was taken to the hospital with a minor whiplash injury after a man hit her in central Copenhagen, her office said.
Frederiksen is “safe but shaken” by Friday’s incident, the office said, adding that her scheduled engagements on Saturday were cancelled. Eyewitnesses told Danish media that the 46-year-old Prime Minister had been able to walk away from the scene.
Police quickly arrested a 39-year-old man in connection with the assault on Kultorvet Square in the capital’s historic centre. He later appeared in a pre-trial custody hearing in a Copenhagen district court. The man denied that he had anything against Frederiksen, saying she was “a really good Prime Minister” and that he had been surprised to run into her on the street.
Police investigating the assault do not believe that the attack was politically motivated. The Danish news agency Ritzau reported that the man was drunk and under the influence of other drugs at the time and that he was a Polish citizen who had been a resident in Denmark for a long time.
Voters in Denmark go to the polls on Sunday. There have been at least two attacks on politicians in Germany in the immediate run-up to the elections. And on May 15, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and seriously injured.