Danes form human ring outside Copenhagen synagogue

Thousands attend interfaith event at site where Jewish security guard was killed in a February terror attack

By AP and ToI Staff 14 March 2015, 7:41 pm 6

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Danish people of Muslim, Jewish and Christian faith form a peace ring around the synagogue in Copenhagen, Saturday, March 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Mads Nissen/Polfoto)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — People of different faiths formed a human ring Saturday outside the synagogue in Copenhagen where a Jewish security guard was fatally shot last month.

Organizer Niddal El-Jabr said the idea behind the show of unity was to “send a powerful statement” that “Jews should able to have their religion in peace.”

Attendance was reported by The Associated Press to be in the “thousands.”

A similar event held in Oslo in the days following the attack had involved over a thousand people, but were later found to have been exaggerated.

Saturday’s gathering was inspired by similar symbolic events in Scandinavia in recent weeks. On February 27, Copenhagen’s mayor joined a “ring of peace” in the nearby City Hall square. Police had banned any events outside the synagogue at the time, citing security.

Copenhagen Jewish community guard Dan Uzan, killed in a February 15 terrorist attack (screen capture: Channel 2)

On February 15, Omar el-Hussein killed Dan Uzan, the guard and Danish filmmaker Finn Noergaard, who was attending a free speech event at a cultural center in Copenhagen, several kilometers away.

The attacks, which occurred just weeks after jihadist gunmen killed 17 people in Paris, raised fears of heightened tension between religious communities in Nordic countries.

Hannah Bentow, whose bat mitzvah celebration Uzan was protecting, marked her coming of age in Jerusalem this week.