Lars Hedegaard

Lars Hedegaard Jensen (born 19 September 1942 in Horsens) is a Danish historian, journalist and author, known especially as a critic of Islam. He graduated from Horsens Statsskole in 1962, completed a history degree at Aarhus University in 1971 in the Marxist historical-analysis tradition then current there, and took English as a subsidiary subject at the University of Copenhagen in 1973. In 2013 the Danish news agency Ritzau reported that he had been married twice and had three children and a stepdaughter, and that when he married Barbara Levin in 1969 he converted to Judaism and received the Hebrew name Avram Noah ben Avram.

He taught at Det Frie Gymnasium and Avedøre Statsgymnasium from 1971 to 1974, worked as a publishing editor in Los Angeles from 1975 to 1980, and was an editor at Politikens Forlag and a consultant to the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO). From 1987 to 1990 he was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Information. Kristeligt Dagblad later wrote that he left the paper after its reporting on the Blekingegade group put him at odds with parts of the left with which he had been associated. He was an editor at the Nordic Council from 1990 to 2001 and a commentator for Weekendavisen and Berlingske. In 2008 he was dismissed from Berlingske's satirical column "Groft sagt"; Kristeligt Dagblad attributed the dismissal to the view that his criticism of Islam had gone too far.

Hedegaard was a co-founder and chairman of Trykkefrihedsselskabet (the Free Press Society) of 2004, and held the chair until 2014. In 2013 he also headed the International Free Press Society, founded in 2009, which campaigned for the Dutch politician Geert Wilders's right to criticise Islam. He appeared in public with the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. Among statements later quoted by the public broadcaster DR was his description of modern Islamism as "first and foremost a political ideology on a par with communism and Nazism."

In an interview published on the website snaphanen.dk he said that "girls in Muslim families are raped by their uncles, their cousins or their father." The Eastern High Court fined him 5,000 kroner. On 20 April 2012 the Supreme Court of Denmark acquitted him, finding that the prosecution had not proved he knew the remarks would be published. The court agreed that he ought to have realised the remarks might spread, which established negligence rather than the intent the statute required, and it held that the statements, taken on their own, violated the racism provision of the criminal code.

On 5 February 2013 a man posing as a postman fired at Hedegaard at his home in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. Police told Ritzau that the shot passed just over his head, that the pistol then jammed, and that Hedegaard, then 70, was unhurt; the suspect was described as a man of about 20 to 25 with a non-Danish ethnic background. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt called the attack abhorrent and said it would be worse if it was an attempt to stop him using his freedom of expression, while stressing that the motive was not yet clear. In November 2013 a court remanded Basil Hassan in custody in his absence on suspicion of attempted murder; he was arrested in Istanbul in April 2014, extradition to Denmark failed, and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service told Hedegaard that October that Hassan had been released. Reports in 2017 that Hassan had been killed in fighting in or near Syria were not confirmed by the Danish foreign ministry. In the days after the shooting Hedegaard stayed at an undisclosed address under round-the-clock protection and told DR he was preparing for the security service to remain part of his life, while saying the extent of that protection was still to be settled and that he would not accept being kept permanently away from public events. In a 2022 interview for his 80th birthday he said he had abandoned Marxism because, in his account, socialist rule had repeatedly ended in oppression and poverty, and that he had turned to Muslim immigration because he believed Muslim immigrants, unlike others, continued to live in parallel societies.

Early life and education

Childhood in Horsens

Lars Hedegaard Jensen was born on 19 September 1942 in Horsens. Reviews of his 2010 memoir, Verden var så rød, mor. Erindringer 1942–1980, describe a childhood in modest circumstances. His father was a house painter and a Social Democrat, and Hedegaard is presented as a mønsterbryder, someone who moved out of that class background. In Information, David Rehling, summarizing the book, called him the proletarian boy from a meager flat in Horsens, whose hard-working parents backed the reformism of the Social Democrats. The young Hedegaard, the review says, came to think that this politics was a way his parents failed themselves.

In the 1950s he attended Ryesgades Skole in Horsens. A 2017 Kristeligt Dagblad portrait describes him as a frail boy who stayed out of fights until a classmate made him a standing target of physical and psychological bullying; he then hit and kicked back and drove the tormentor off. He went on to Horsens Statsskole. The memoir review says he met both unfavorable and favorable special treatment there and finished first in his class, in a period when the gymnasium course was still academically strict. He passed the studentereksamen in 1962.

University and the far left

As a very young man he was active on the far left. A review of the memoirs places him, from about 1960, in Socialistisk Ungdoms Forum (SUF), which it calls the newly formed youth organization of the Socialist People's Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti). SUF was constituted on 6 September 1961 on the initiative of members of that party. He later belonged, the same review says, to Revolutionære Socialisters Forbund (RSF), also known as Socialistisk Arbejderparti (SAP)—the Trotskyists. That naming tracks the group's history. Socialistisk Ungdoms Forum became Trotskyist-dominated in 1970, was renamed RSF in 1973, and in 1980 became SAP, the Danish section of the Fourth International. A Newspaq profile states that Hedegaard remained a member of SAP until 1982. The party never exceeded roughly 200 members and made no electoral breakthrough. From the mid-1980s it helped form the Red–Green Alliance (Enhedslisten), established in 1989, while keeping its own organization. On the Newspaq account, Hedegaard had already left in 1982.

He studied history at Aarhus University. Henrik Jensen's review of the memoir places those studies in the years before the student revolt, when university work was still exacting. A Ritzau fact sheet records a major (hovedfag) in history at Aarhus, completed in 1971, and a minor (bifag) in English at the University of Copenhagen in 1973. Politiken describes the qualification as a cand.mag. in history and English. Berlingske adds that the history degree was in the variant of the subject then called Marxist historical analysis. Rehling writes of a 1971 graduation from an Aarhus University that was by then strongly Marxist, and of a revolutionary politics, with a Trotskyist superstructure, set against his parents' Social Democratic reformism. The memoir of 1942–1980, the main published account of this period, appeared in 2010 from Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek and closes as Hedegaard, nearing forty, turned back toward Denmark.

Journalism and editorial career

Teaching, publishing and the unions

After a 1971 history degree from Aarhus University, in the track then called Marxist historical analysis, Hedegaard taught at Det Frie Gymnasium and then at Statens Forsøgsgymnasium in Avedøre, in posts that a Ritzau note places in 1971–1974. While teaching he wrote upper-secondary history textbooks. Under his full name, Lars Hedegaard Jensen, G.E.C. Gad’s Fundamental historie series includes Den amerikanske fred (1945–62; a 1977 edition of 248 pages) and Den permanente krise (1962–79, published 1979).

From 1975 to 1980 he was a publishing editor in Los Angeles, a job Information later described as work at a remote left-wing house. A longer biographical note names the employer as Sage Publications. He next edited at Politiken’s book imprint, Politikens Forlag, dated from 1980 by Ritzau and to 1981–84 in the longer note. In 1986 he was a consultant at the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), and he has said he went straight from editing LO’s trade-union newsletter into a newspaper editorship.

Dagbladet Information

On 1 January 1987 Hedegaard became co-editor-in-chief of the Copenhagen daily Information with Peter Wivel, for a three-year term he called a package: Wivel was regarded as strongly on the right, and Hedegaard was meant as a left-wing counterpart, a role he later said he failed. The term overlapped with coverage of the Blekingegade Gang. Journalist Lars Villemoes, who had known the milieu around Kommunistisk Arbejdskreds, published a first article on 13–14 May 1989 on the group’s history, organisation and contacts with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Hedegaard was initially sceptical, then met some of Villemoes’s sources, judged the reporting credible and backed it, including in an editorial of 16 May 1989 urging the left to examine how such crime had become thinkable.

The articles drew sharp criticism. Jørn Vestergaard, Flemming Balvig and Preben Wilhjelm accused the paper of abandoning basic journalistic principles by printing damaging claims from anonymous sources and weak indications, and an anonymous poster called for a boycott over alleged informing. Hedegaard said few colleagues defended Villemoes by name, and that he and then Villemoes were frozen out, an account Ellegaard disputed. He left in December 1989. Ritzau dates the editorship 1987–90, when Lasse Ellegaard replaced the pair. Villemoes resigned in 1990 after an intern was given the trial reports, calling it a writing ban under political pressure; Ellegaard said that was untrue, that Villemoes could still write on the PFLP angle, and that he was too involved for a straight court report, a split Ellegaard said would also limit attacks from a frustrated left. Villemoes continued at Weekendavisen. Hedegaard has called the row the turning point of his life. Peter Øvig Knudsen later called Villemoes’s articles pioneering.

Later editorial work

From 1990 Hedegaard was an editor at the Nordic Council; Ritzau runs the post to 2001, while a 2022 Kristeligt Dagblad profile says that in the 1990s he worked for the Nordic Council of Ministers. Ritzau also lists him as a commentator for Weekendavisen and Berlingske Tidende. From 2000 he wrote regularly for Berlingske’s satirical column Groft sagt, which he and Claes Kastholm Hansen said they had helped start that year on an idea from debate editor Bent Blüdnikow. Altinget described the tie as about ten years long.

In mid-September 2008, in a redesign under editor-in-chief Lisbeth Knudsen, Berlingske dropped him from the column. Debate editor Kristian Mouritzen said eight or nine long-serving commentators, bloggers and Groft sagt writers were being replaced, and that the paper had no policy against criticism of Islam; he recalled one day with too many items on Islam in the column, but said that did not concern Hedegaard. Hedegaard said he was told his copy had become boring, and called the dismissal political: he said he had repeatedly been told to stop writing about Islam, and that the paper was moving in a more Social Democratic direction, closer to Politiken. Knudsen called that charge outrageous and untrue, wrote that he had long had room to write about Islam and had sometimes been asked to broaden his range, and treated his account as publicity for a book of 100 Groft sagt columns illustrated by Kurt Westergaard. Parish priest Edith Thingstrup replaced him. Kastholm Hansen called the decision wrong and the column weaker, withheld copy for several weeks, then resumed. In November 2008 Jyllands-Posten gave Hedegaard a five-weekday guest column, I eksil; editor Jørn Mikkelsen said this answered a claim of political purge and was not a permanent hire.

Books and commentary on Islam

I krigens hus and related books

Hedegaard's book-length writing on Islam began with I krigens hus: Islams kolonisering af Vesten (2003), written with Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen and published by Hovedland in 256 pages. As Bent Jensen summarized it in Jyllands-Posten, the authors meant the subtitle literally: a third jihad, not by arms but as what they called a demographic colonization of Europe. Jensen called the book disturbing but solidly documented. Politiken's Michael Jarlner, quoted the next year in Jyllands-Posten when the book was cited among the reasons the Danish centre of PEN International hesitated over Hedegaard's membership, wrote that "fordomsfuld paranoia af værste skuffe" ran through it and that more than a billion Muslims were cast as a monolith more or less consciously directed.

In 2009 Hedegaard and Mogens Camre published 1400 års krigen. Islams strategi, EU og frihedens endeligt with Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek. Dennis Nørmark in Jyllands-Posten rendered the thesis as a claim that everyone from the Muslim greengrocer to the taxi driver belonged to a conspiracy against Western freedom, knowingly or not, and objected that ideologies and religions were treated as if they were animate beings.

Muhammeds piger: Vold, mord og voldtægter i Islams hus (Trykkefrihedsselskabet, 148 pages, 2011) grew out of remarks Hedegaard made in December 2009 about rape inside Muslim families. Sørine Gotfredsen in Kristeligt Dagblad called it important and in places unbearable, and noted its use of Quran citations and of writers including Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Lars Sandbeck in Politiken granted a sympathetic purpose but judged the account wholly unnuanced, writing that violence against women occurs everywhere and did not appear to interest the author. Nørmark asked whether "one hears it all the time" was evidence enough.

With Camre he returned to the argument in Den forbudte sandhed, launched at Christiansborg in 2013. Politiken headlined the authors' alternative as stopping immigration or abolishing the welfare state. A review in the same paper said the book offered neither truth nor anything forbidden, only undocumented assertions and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Berlingske's Claes Kastholm Hansen, quoted by DR, gave four stars out of six for a fact-rich "wolf is coming" pamphlet and called the authors good analysts, while describing the book as a concentrate of views they already held.

From a trial issue on 30 August 2012, Hedegaard and the Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist edited the weekly Dispatch International, a national-conservative paper centered on Denmark and Sweden and due to begin regular publication on 3 January 2013. DR described it as strongly right-wing and critical of immigration and Islam; the trial issue questioned whether Barack Obama was a Muslim. After the February 2013 attack, Carlqvist told DR she believed the weekly, not Hedegaard's earlier statements, was the motive. The company ended 2013 with a deficit of 217,000 kroner.

Memoirs and later commentary

Verden var så rød, mor. Erindringer 1942–1980 (Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 206 pages, 2010) covers the Horsens childhood, Trotskyism and years in California. David Rehling in Information found long passages well written but faulted self-congratulation and a persecution complex, and called the title odd because the break Hedegaard dated to 1989—his support, as co-editor, for reporting on the Blekingegade Gang—fell outside the volume. Henrik Jensen in Kristeligt Dagblad called it an entertaining portrait of a rootless pattern-breaker, read through later eyes, including Hedegaard's views on immigration. Henrik Gade Jensen in Jyllands-Posten called the memoirs exciting reading.

Ræven går derude, mor. Erindringer 1980–2011 (296 pages) follows the break with Marxism, the years at Information, a Danish translation of Ibn Warraq and I krigens hus. Kristeligt Dagblad described sharp, witty "feel-bad" memoirs and took the fox of the title to be Islam. The reviewer reported Hedegaard's claim, drawn from Bat Ye'or, that European and Arab leaders in the 1970s traded oil for Muslim mass immigration—the Eurabia thesis—and wrote that without documentation it looked peculiar. Jyllands-Posten presented the book as a reckoning with his past, including regret over 1990s work in the European Movement.

Attentatet (2015) is principally an account of the February 2013 shooting. Rehling wrote that it was strongest on the attack and weaker where it repeated a general critique of Islam. Henrik Jensen noted that the attempt changed Hedegaard's life without making him doubt that he was right.

In the novel Fragmenter af Danmarks historie 2020–2031, Hedegaard sketched a near-future Denmark in which Islam reaches into every layer of society and the Constitution gives way to sharia. Weekendavisen's Søren Villemoes, as reported by B.T., called the book absurd, painfully poor and a literary failure. Hedegaard told B.T. that satire had not been his intention.

Free speech organizations

Danish Free Press Society

In November 2004 Lars Hedegaard, the historian David Gress, the philosopher Kai Sørlander and the Danish People's Party MPs Søren Krarup and Jesper Langballe invited supporters to form Trykkefrihedsselskabet af 2004, the Danish Free Press Society. Their notice, reported by Jyllands-Posten, said it would "stand up for the free word wherever it is threatened and regardless of who threatens it," taking its name from an 1835 society, Selskabet til Trykkefrihedens rette Brug. Gress said the aim was Danish debate, where he found immigration coverage one-sided, not a global campaign like the Danish section of PEN International.

The invitation followed a dispute in Danish PEN over I krigens hus, which Hedegaard wrote with Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen. In January 2004 acting president Klaus Rothstein said some board members feared the book conflicted with PEN's charter against disparaging speech, and that the question was membership, not Hedegaard's right to speak. The board sent the application to a general meeting; Hedegaard withdrew it as a "Stalinist/McCarthyist" farce, and Brix, who had nominated him, left. He later said the society was created in 2004 partly because the application had been frozen.

A founding general meeting had been held by mid-March 2005, with Hedegaard as chairman of a body Jyllands-Posten put at about 150 members. He did not stand again in 2014, after nine years as chair. Theologian Katrine Winkel Holm, involved since 2004 and then vice-chair, succeeded him that March, with lawyer Aia Fog as vice-chair. They said threats came not only from what they called orthodox Islam but from European Union curbs on "hateful" speech, and urged repeal of penal-code section 266b. On 18 March 2018 Fog, vice-chair for five years, was elected chair; Winkel Holm, who said she had been in the leadership since 2005, remained a board member.

In a 2007 speech later quoted by DR, Politiken editor Tøger Seidenfaden called the society a rabble of "intolerant Muslim-haters." In December 2009 Naser Khader of the Conservatives and Søren Pind of Venstre left its advisory council after Hedegaard said in a video that girls in Muslim families were raped by male relatives and that Muslim men treated women as "breeding machines." He said he meant Islamic practice, not every Muslim; Khader called that inadequate and, citing support from Krarup and other party figures, described the society as a Danish People's Party appendage. Pind, who said he had been only an adviser, also withdrew.

International Free Press Society

The BBC reported in 2013 that Hedegaard also headed the International Free Press Society, founded in 2009, which had campaigned for the Dutch politician Geert Wilders's right to criticise Islam. It described the Danish society as arguing that religious and ideological interests threatened expression. The Danish group made Wilders the main speaker on 14 June 2009 in the Landsting hall at Christiansborg Palace. He told Ritzau that Islam was a totalitarian ideology and that immigration from Muslim countries should stop to prevent what he called Islamisation.

Sappho and the Sappho Prize

From 2005 the society published the website and newsletter Sappho, edited by Hedegaard with Helle Merete Brix and started on a small grant from Jyllands-Posten's foundation. It used the name of the poet Sappho as a symbol of free speech. The annual prize of the same name, the society said, treated her as standing for unconventionality, the love of freedom and human equality.

Altinget in 2009 called the editors "die-hard anti-Islamists": stories first run there, including one about a priest driven from Tingbjerg, later reached larger media, and nearly 1,500 people received the mailing. Hedegaard said it raised problems other outlets ignored and that journalists cast Muslim immigrants as victims. Ole Birk Olesen, of the libertarian site 180Grader, credited the reporting but said the angle was almost always criticism of Islam.

The prize went first, in 2007, to Flemming Rose, the Jyllands-Posten culture editor who commissioned the Muhammad cartoons, for combining "excellence in his work with courage and a refusal to compromise." In May 2008 Kurt Westergaard, who drew Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, received a sculpture of Sappho and 20,000 kroner. DR has named later recipients including Mark Steyn, Thilo Sarrazin, Ezra Levant, Roger Scruton, Olga Romanova and Karoly Nemeth. In March 2015 Lars Vilks collected it under heavy guard in parliament, his first appearance after a gun attack on a Copenhagen free-speech debate; the BBC called the society right-wing. On 18 January 2020 Aia Fog awarded it to Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), a founder of the English Defence League and former British National Party member, while anti-racism protesters gathered outside. She said the prize was for his speech, not his convictions for violence, and that most winners had criticised Islam because the society saw that as the main threat to expression.

Hate-speech prosecution

The 2009 interview

In December 2009 Lars Hedegaard, then chairman of Trykkefrihedsselskabet (the Danish Free Press Society), gave an interview of a little more than 35 minutes at his home during a Christmas lunch. It was recorded and, within a few hours, posted on snaphanen.dk. The Supreme Court of Denmark later recorded that he spoke on the occasion of a book about Muslims that he had co-written.

In August 2010 the regional prosecutor in Copenhagen charged him under section 266 b(1) of the Danish Penal Code, the hate-speech offence known in Denmark as the racism paragraph. DR reported that the indictment quoted him as saying that "when a Muslim man rapes a woman, it is his right to do so"; that "when Swedish girls are raped, gang-raped, etc., etc., there is nothing wrong with it, seen from an Islamic perspective, this is your right"; that "they rape their own children. You hear that all the time. Girls in Muslim families are raped by their uncles, their cousins or their father"; and that "women have no value, they are not human beings," their function being to bear "the warrior's offspring" and to be available "for sexual purposes." He told DR that he stood by the remarks. In the Supreme Court he argued that the charged sentences had been taken out of context: the interview, he said, concerned Islam rather than Muslims, and he had meant to explain Islamic views of women, not to insult anyone. He said he had expected a transcript for approval and would have required corrections.

District Court and High Court

Section 266 b(1) punishes anyone who, "publicly or with intent to disseminate to a wider circle," threatens, insults or degrades a group because of race, skin colour, national or ethnic origin, faith or sexual orientation, with a fine or up to two years' imprisonment. If the statement is not made in public, liability requires forsæt — intent that it reach a wider circle — and not mere negligence.

On 31 January 2011 the District Court at Frederiksberg acquitted him. Jyllands-Posten reported that the judge found the statements "insulting and degrading" toward Muslims, but that Hedegaard had not known the interview would be published. A Jyllands-Posten editorial quoting the judgment added that he knew of a dictaphone but not a video recording, and that the interview went online before he could approve it. The court held it unproved that the remarks were made in order to be spread, in that form, to a wider circle. Hedegaard called the result "a fantastic victory for freedom of speech." The state prosecutor appealed and sought a fine in the Eastern High Court (Østre Landsret).

On 3 May 2011 the High Court convicted him and imposed ten day-fines of 500 kroner, 5,000 kroner in all. DR reported that the court found an email had told him beforehand that the interview would be recorded and published on snaphanen.dk, and that he had no right of prior approval. The formula later examined on appeal was that he "should have realized" (burde have indset) the statements would be spread publicly to a wider circle. Hedegaard told TV 2 the judgment was "scandalous," denied being a racist, and said he had not meant to accuse every Muslim man of such conduct.

Supreme Court acquittal

Hedegaard appealed. On 20 April 2012 seven judges of the Supreme Court unanimously acquitted him in case 228/2011 and ordered the Treasury to pay the costs of all three instances.

The court first addressed the wording. Insulting and degrading statements of the kind he had been found to have made, "which contain the message that Muslims in general commit serious crime," are punishable under section 266 b(1) if made "publicly or with intent to disseminate to a wider circle." DR reported this as a holding that the statements, taken in isolation, violated the racism provision. These statements had not been made publicly, so the issue was proof of intent to disseminate them more widely.

Under the Administration of Justice Act the Supreme Court cannot retry a high court's assessment of the evidence on guilt. It can decide whether intent was correctly applied and whether the facts found below can support it. The prosecution agreed that "should have realized" cannot convict where the statute requires intent, but argued that the High Court had found intent and had merely written "should" instead of "must," a slip the Supreme Court could repair. The defence said the formula was negligence only, not intent, even as dolus eventualis.

The Supreme Court read the High Court's premises as they stood. By finding that Hedegaard "should have realized" the statements would be spread, that court had expressly found negligence, not intent. Negligence could not support a conviction for intentional dissemination, and the case was not sent back. The acquittal therefore turned on the mental element required for a statement that was not made in public. It did not hold that the same wording would have been lawful if spoken publicly, or with proven intent that it reach a wider circle.

Assassination attempt

The shooting of 5 February 2013

On the morning of 5 February 2013, a man posing as a postal worker came to the home of Lars Hedegaard, then 70, on Pelargoniavej in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. Police told the Ritzau news agency that the man, described as about 20 to 25 and of an ethnic background other than Danish, pretended to deliver a package and drew a pistol; the shot passed just over Hedegaard's head, the weapon then jammed, and he was not injured. Broadcasters reported a scuffle before the attacker fled.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt called an attack on Hedegaard "an abominable act, which I condemn in the strongest terms" in a written comment to Ritzau, and said it would be still worse if the aim had been to stop him using his freedom of expression, while adding that the motive was not yet known. Hedegaard was then chairman of the Danish Free Press Society (Trykkefrihedsselskabet) and of the International Free Press Society. The BBC set the shooting beside earlier violence linked to the 2005 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons: Somali refugee Mohamed Geele was jailed for trying to kill cartoonist Kurt Westergaard with an axe in January 2010, and Chechen asylum seeker Lors Dukayev was jailed for terrorism over an attempted letter bomb directed at Jyllands-Posten.

Investigation and the suspect

Copenhagen Police later named Basil Hassan, a Danish citizen born on 24 May 1987 and also referred to in Danish reporting as Mohammed Basil El-Cheikh, as the suspect. A December 2016 police statement said he had been charged with the attempted murder, remanded in his absence at a hearing behind double closed doors at the Frederiksberg court on 7 November 2014, and then internationally wanted. He has not stood trial in person, and no public verdict has decided whether he fired the shot.

Turkish police detained him in April 2014 at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport, where a Danish liaison officer had said he would meet his parents, and found a forged Syrian passport. A Turkish court acquitted him of the document charge on 8 July 2014; a lawyer's appeal halted extradition, and authorities told Hürriyet there was no official record that he had left Turkey. Denmark did not obtain his surrender. Danish outlets later reported that Turkey freed him in the autumn of 2014 in an exchange connected to hostages held by the Islamic State, a handover Jyllands-Posten said its sources believed Danish officials were highly confident had occurred, and which Turkey has not confirmed. Hürriyet's document-based account placed the release more than two months before the hostages were freed on 20 September 2014 and treated a swap involving Hassan as unconfirmed.

On 22 November 2016 the United States Department of State designated him a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224, describing him as an external-operations plotter for ISIL who "was accused of shooting" Hedegaard and who, after arrest in Turkey, "was released as part of an alleged exchange" for 49 hostages and was believed to have gone to Syria. An officer of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), whose 2019 evidence was read out by the presiding judge in a Copenhagen case, said Hassan had been a target as interest intensified in 2010–2011, that PET held preventive talks with him before the attack, and that he then went to Lebanon and Raqqa, where engineering training at the Technical University of Denmark and access to drone parts helped him rise in the Islamic State's drone programme.

Danish authorities have not confirmed reports that he was killed. In September 2017 a cousin told DR that Hassan's parents had heard he was dead, without a date, and the Foreign Ministry would neither confirm nor deny Lebanese reports of a Danish citizen killed in Lebanon that August. In 2019 a woman described as his Dutch wife told DR he was killed in Raqqa on 9 or 10 July 2017. The PET witness could not confirm the death and said authorities had continued to treat him as possibly alive.

Name ban, related cases and protection

From April 2014 a name ban meant Danish media could refer to the suspect only as "BH". Copenhagen Police charged Hedegaard in the spring of 2015 with breaking it. In March 2016 the Frederiksberg court fined him 10,000 kroner for using the name in two articles on a Swedish website, in his book Attentatet, and on Facebook. He argued necessity, because the suspect was free and publicity might lead to an arrest; the court held that this did not excuse the breach. The Eastern High Court upheld the fine on 14 September 2016. In mid-December 2016 that court lifted the ban, citing the time elapsed and the American publication of Hassan's name and alleged Islamic State role, and Copenhagen Police then issued his name and photograph.

In a separate case, three men were prosecuted for sending drone parts to the Islamic State through a middleman in Turkey, which prosecutors said was at Hassan's instigation. He was remanded in his absence in 2018 and described by police as the central figure, but he was not in court. On 10 September 2020 the Eastern High Court gave one defendant, a Turkish citizen, eight years and expulsion for complicity in terrorism over thermal cameras sent in 2017, when armed-drone use was known; the other two received four and a half years and three years for promoting a terrorist organisation. Earlier shipments were not treated as terrorism, because it was not then clear that the drones were used in lethal attacks; the judgment's account called Hassan, an engineer, head of a drone unit.

After the shooting Hedegaard was under PET protection at an address meant to be secret. In April 2013 DR found it in the business register because of two companies he was linked to; PET removed the entry but said that, living under his own name and appearing in public, he might still be traced. In October 2015 he still had personal protection and told DR he no longer expected the attempted-murder case to advance; Copenhagen Police said nothing further had happened since the contacts with Turkey.

Political activity

Danish People's Party

Lars Hedegaard was a member of the Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti), but Altinget reported on 29 January 2010 that very few people knew it. He had kept a low profile, staying away from general assemblies and ordinary party life, and had resigned earlier that month. The break followed an interview on the blog Snaphanen, given shortly before Christmas 2009, in which he said that girls in Muslim families were raped by their uncles, cousins or fathers. After strong criticism he said in a press release that the remarks described the ideology of Islam, not all Muslims.

Altinget wrote that the case quickly became a burden on the party. Folketing members Søren Krarup and Jesper Langballe were co-founders of Trykkefrihedsselskabet, which Hedegaard chaired, and party leader Pia Kjærsgaard sat on its advisory body. Krarup backed him; after several days of silence, Kjærsgaard distanced herself. Hedegaard told Altinget he had nothing to reproach in her remarks, but that the party should not be identified with his opinions. Leaving, he said, also showed that Trykkefrihedsselskabet was not a front organisation for the party.

In October 2014 he told TV 2 that he was in no party and would refuse if the Danish People's Party asked him to stand, because he was "elendig til at gå i takt." He planned instead to seek a Folketing seat as an independent. Altinget reported that his programme, Danmark er danskernes land, focused on limiting immigration from Muslim countries. On 4 May 2015 he withdrew. He told Berlingske, as reported by Altinget, that he had the voter declarations needed to stand but had been overconfident, and could not campaign in West Zealand while finishing a book on the 2013 attempt on his life. He was not on the ballot.

Nye Borgerlige

On 31 May 2016 he joined Nye Borgerlige, then collecting voter declarations in order to contest a Folketing election. Chair Pernille Vermund posted a photograph of herself kissing him on the cheek and wrote, "Velkommen på holdet til vores nye medlem Lars Hedegaard." DR reported that the party found the Danish People's Party too "blødsødne" on immigration. Vermund had told TV 2 that it paired conservative values with an economic line like that of the Liberal Alliance, and opposed international agreements she said constrained Danish self-government.

Hedegaard told TV 2 that Denmark had only a few years left in which to be saved, and that Nye Borgerlige was the most promising place for an organised effort beyond commentary, which he would continue. He had not returned to the Danish People's Party, he said, because he did not understand its position, and he criticised chairman Kristian Thulesen Dahl for talk of a European version of Islam. Hedegaard said that showed Thulesen Dahl did not understand Islam. He did not know how active he would be, or whether he might stand for the Folketing if the party qualified; that, he said, depended on whether it thought he could be of use. He had no ambition for a political career, though he offered what he called several decades of experience.

Reception and criticism

Awards and supporters

The shooting at Lars Hedegaard's home in Copenhagen on 5 February 2013 was condemned across politics in Denmark, including by opponents of his view of Islam. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt called the attack deplorable and said it would be worse if meant to stop him speaking. Annette Vilhelmsen, business minister and leader of the Socialist People's Party, said a political assassination struck at democracy, not only one person. Anders Samuelsen of the Liberal Alliance said the attacker should be expelled.

Newspapers defended open debate while rejecting his conclusions. Berlingske wrote that everyone should, for the moment, stand "shoulder to shoulder with Lars Hedegaard in defence of free speech." Jyllands-Posten, a declared target of plots since the 2005 Muhammad cartoons, said no one should be frightened out of the debate. Politiken said it shared only the premise that democratic argument must be free and peaceful.

Muslim organizations spoke the same day. Imran Shah of Islamisk Trossamfund told Jyllands-Posten that shooting people was unacceptable, political or religious motive aside, and that criticism belonged in "an ordinary civilized debate." He told Ekstra Bladet that a Muslim who fired to "defend Islam" would be disturbed and have misunderstood the religion, and that Hedegaard should be able to live in peace. Later that month The New York Times reported a wider response. The Islamic Society, which runs a large Copenhagen mosque and in 2006 took the cartoons to Egypt and Lebanon, condemned the attack and said it regretted that journey. Minhaj-ul-Quran International demonstrated outside city hall. Qaiser Najeeb, a Dane whose father came from Afghanistan, said, "We don't defend Hedegaard's views but do defend his right to speak." Integration minister Karen Hækkerup called the Muslim response "a good sign." At a Free Press Society meeting in parliament, the paper reported, he received a standing ovation after saying he had no problem with Muslims but did with Islam.

Geert Wilders, a board member of the International Free Press Society Hedegaard chaired, wrote of a murder attempt on his friend.

Critics

The charge that he dealt in hate speech was older than the attack. On 2 October 2007, at a Free Press Society meeting for the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, Politiken's editor-in-chief Tøger Seidenfaden denounced the hosts and left. He called protection from violence a police matter, but said the organizers were promoting views of Muslims and Islam that were "deeply problematic, in some cases directly abhorrent." Hedegaard, he said, had been refused membership of PEN because members regarded many of his statements as hate speech, and the society was "in reality a gathering of intolerant Muslim-haters." DR reprinted the passage on the day of the shooting.

After the attack, Ritzau reported that papers still called his positions "degrading," "unreasonably generalizing" and "hateful." Politiken's leader said his picture of the world was about as far from the paper's as one could imagine, and that his "garbled, hateful and degrading statements about Muslims in Denmark" were reprehensible.

The New York Times described his opinions as "a stew of anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts of a coming civil war," and noted that a study the year before by Hope not Hate had placed him among "Islamophobic" writers whose rhetoric "poisons the political discourse, sometimes with deadly effect." Mikael Rothstein, a historian of religion at the University of Copenhagen, said on television that Hedegaard "wanted this conflict" and that "brutal words can be as strong as the brutal physical act of violence." Asmat Ullah Mojadeddi, chairman of the Muslim Council of Denmark, called him "an extremist."

Hedegaard answered in Politiken that Rothstein had called him "a kind of violent person" and invented a charge of "linguistic terror," setting speech beside bombings he said he had never urged. He told the Times, "There is no such thing as 'moderate' Islam." The paper also returned to the 2009 remarks on rape in Muslim families behind his racism case: he did not deny the words but said he had not authorized publication. A district court had acquitted him, a high court then fined him 5,000 kroner, and the Supreme Court acquitted him in April 2012. Three statements attributed to him appeared in Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto before the 2011 Norway attacks, including a warning that Muslim immigration would lead to war, as in Lebanon, without an "intellectual rearmament." Hedegaard replied that Breivik had also cited Plato, Shakespeare and Churchill.

Personal life

Family

Hedegaard has been married twice. In 1969 he married Barbara Levin and, according to a Ritzau note carried by DR, converted and received the Hebrew name Avram Noah ben Avram, the name given to male converts. Berlingske describes that wife as an American Jew and states that he converted to Judaism; a Kristeligt Dagblad review of his memoirs says he converted in order to marry a Jewish American woman. The relationship took him to the United States for several years: the review places him in California, the Ritzau note lists him as a publishing editor in Los Angeles from 1975 to 1980, and Berlingske writes that he returned to Denmark after a divorce.

Published accounts of his children differ. In 2008 Kristeligt Dagblad wrote that he was living alone, that a daughter from the California years lived in New York and had given him a grandchild, and that he was also the father of three adult children from earlier relationships. A 2013 Ritzau sheet instead recorded three children and one stepdaughter (bonusdatter), then aged 21 to 37. At his 80th birthday in September 2022, Kristeligt Dagblad repeated that count and added five grandchildren. He said he regretted having been unfaithful to his wife and not kind enough to his children when they were small.

Life under protection

After a man fired at him at his home in Frederiksberg on 5 February 2013, Hedegaard was placed under the protection of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (Politiets Efterretningstjeneste, PET) and moved to a secret address. Fourteen months later he told Kristeligt Dagblad that he was still in hiding, that his movements were sharply limited, and that he expected to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

In April 2013 DR found the address with three clicks in the CVR business register, where it was listed because he was involved in two companies. He notified PET, which removed the entry. PET wrote that, because he still lived and appeared in public under his own name, his residence could still be traced. Hedegaard said he did not want to live in a prison and called the arrangement a balance between reasonable safety and a free life.

By October 2015 he had left the Frederiksberg flat for what he called exile in Udkantsdanmark (“peripheral Denmark”), with PET officers following him on walks. The first nights were in a hotel outside Copenhagen; for about a month he then moved between holiday houses, seeing only the agents, who cooked and brought whisky and newspapers. A cinema or a beach had to be planned in advance. He travelled often, preferred being abroad, where he was not recognized, and expected to need police protection for the rest of his life. Interviewed at 80 in September 2022, he was still living “somewhere in peripheral Denmark” under PET guards and would not describe his housing or daily life.