(JTA) — The suspected gunman who killed two in separate terror attacks in Copenhagen, including a volunteer Jewish security guard, has been identified as a 22-year-old man already known to police.
Danish media named the alleged gunman, who was killed early Sunday morning in a shootout with police, as Omar El-Hussein, 22, a Denmark native who was recently released from jail after serving a sentence for aggravated assault. Police said Sunday that the alleged gunman was known to police because of past violence, gang-related activities and possession of weapons.
Two other people, reported to be suspects in the shootings on a Copenhagen cultural center and the city’s central synagogue, reportedly were arrested Sunday at an Internet cafe in the Norrebro neighborhood where the gunman was killed.
Two policemen and a volunteer civilian guard were shot in the synagogue attack as they guarded outside the building in which a bat mitzvah party was taking place. The civilian guard, Dan Uzan, 37, died later from his injuries.
The shooting after midnight Sunday at Copenhagen’s central synagogue in Krystalgade occurred several hours after a fatal shooting at a free speech event at a cultural center featuring the Danish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who is under police protection because of his cartoons caricaturing Mohammed.
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